


All the magic we made

by Nakeycatstakebaths



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant Minor Character Death, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Delinquents, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Harry Potter AU, High School, Light Angst, Minor Character Death, They are school aged for this entire fic, vignette style
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29711271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakeycatstakebaths/pseuds/Nakeycatstakebaths
Summary: HARRY POTTER AU!There was a prophecy, a prediction that two people: one boy and one girl, would bring the downfall of Alie—forever.But Bellamy and Clarke didn’t know that.They just wanted to be normal  Hogwarts students, the kind of people who played games of Quiddich on the weekends and studied for potions exams in the library. Normal, however, always seemed just out of reach.They had a cosmic connection that nobody could ever quite figure out and it left them confused more often than not. But it also might just be the thing that saves the entire wizarding world from destruction.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 20
Kudos: 56





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_Princess_Blake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Princess_Blake/gifts).



> HUGE MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @Slyth-Princess for all her help with this fic. I haven't written for the HP fandom in a long time and this story would not be where it is without all the tireless editing. Much love to you friend, you are a rockstar. 
> 
> I hope y'all like this one. It's quite angsty by my standards but alas, you know me well enough to know it wouldn't be all bad. I'm really excited about this. 
> 
> This story is pre-written and beta'd so it will be posted entirely over the next week!

__

_2010_

_Clarke’s First Year_   
_Bellamy’s Second Year_

“There’s only been a handful of people from the ‘sacred twenty-eight’ that haven’t been in Slytherin,” Wells whispered, chewing nervously on the edge of his toast, eyes flicking toward where their parents were chatting at the end of the table. 

“You’re not going to be in Slytherin,” Clarke sighed, flicking a crumb at her friend. “And anyway, I heard that if you ask, the hat listens to you.” 

“My dad would be so mad if he knew I asked the hat not to put me in Slytherin.” 

“How would he know?” She shrugged, feeding a piece of sausage to her cat. 

“He’s the minister of magic! He knows everything.” 

“Well, what’s he going to do about it if the sorting hat already did its job?” 

Wells continued to chew on his toast, but never actually took a full-sized bite, ignoring her reassurance. Clarke loved her best friend, he was the closest thing she had to a brother, but sometimes he gave her a headache. He worried too much for his good. 

“We’re going to Hogwarts! Stop acting so scared. This is amazing! We’re going to get to move to the castle and run up and down the stairs and meet ghosts!” She continued, listing off all the cool stuff she’d found in her copy of Hogwarts A History. 

“Aren’t you scared about being in Slytherin?” Wells asked, dropping his voice even lower. 

“No. I’m going to be in Gryffindor like my daddy. There’s even Griffin in the name already,” Clarke said matter of factly, proud of her clever discovery. “You can be in Gryffindor too...like I said, all you have to do is ask.” 

Wells did not look convinced. In fact, he looked even more nervous. But he was just like that sometimes, even when there wasn’t a reason to be. 

“Did you know that Alie was in Slytherin?” Wells continued, not picking up on Clarke’s annoyance, and she threw a piece of scrambled egg at his head. 

***

  
Clarke took her place at the Gryffindor table, beaming with pride as her classmates cheered and handed her a cup of juice. 

She didn’t even have to ask. The hat had just known all by itself. It was meant to be. She couldn’t wait to write to her dad and tell him the good news. 

“Welcome home,” an older girl shouted from across the table, taking Clarke’s hand and squeezing it tightly. 

And it did feel like home, sitting next to the other year one students. These would be her bunkmates, her friends—her mother had even told her that most people find the person they are going to marry at Hogwarts. 

To say she was excited was an understatement. 

But she also couldn’t help but be a bit nervous for Wells as the alphabet neared closer and closer to his name. 

Another student was called to Gryffindor, and this time Clarke cheered too, scooting over to make a spot of the new boy beside her. 

He introduced himself as Monty and said he also had a best friend waiting to be sorted. They worried together about where their friends would end up, and he crossed his fingers with her when it was finally Wells’ turn. 

“Is it supposed to take this long?” Monty whispered as the hat sat silently on top of Wells’ head. 

  
“I don’t know; he was really nervous, though,” she said back, hoping that her friend would be brave enough to stand up for himself. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he was sorted in Hufflepuff. Not exactly a surprise as far as Clarke was concerned. 

With both of them sorted into their respective houses, the ceremony became incredibly dull, especially with the faint scent of dinner wafting up from the kitchens. One by one, the hat called out names, some taking longer than others. 

Monty’s best friend ended up in Hufflepuff, too, and Clarke assured him that they would visit their friends together whenever they got the chance. 

A few kids looked like they were holding back tears, while others beamed as they walked to their tables. Some were easy to guess, while others took her by surprise. 

“What do you think we’ll have for dinner?” Monty whispered as the last student put the hat on her head. 

“I hope we have mashed potatoes. Those are my—“ Clarke began, eager for the hat to decide so she could start to talk with the people around her at a normal volume. But before she could finish, the large double doors to The Great Hall swung open, and two people burst through. 

Every single set of eyes turned from the sorting hat, back toward a tall boy with curly hair and a smaller girl wearing an enormous sweater. 

“I—er—hello, professor Kane,” the boy said casually, flashing a crooked smile at the headmaster. 

And something about his smile made Clarke’s chest feel tight. 

She’s seen this boy before, once, when she went along with her dad to work. He’d been younger, but his face was still the same, with a splash of freckles across his cheeks. 

Clarke had wanted to talk to him, to ask him his name, but he’d been talking to a grown-up, and her dad pulled her away before she had the chance. But she still remembered how looking at him made her feel like her heart was too big and that it was moving too fast. 

“I told you we should’ve checked on him when he didn’t show up on the train,” the girl across from Clarke exclaimed, smacking the boy next to her as the entire great hall watched the headmaster in silence. “It’s always Bellamy.” 

Bellamy. 

That was his name. 

Clarke took the word and tucked it in her pocket, thinking about how fun it would be to write the loopy l’s and y with her quill. 

“My sister missed the train,” he continued sheepishly, gesturing at the small girl beside him, who looked totally and completely mortified. 

Immediately, the hall burst into hushed whispers. 

Sister. 

Nobody had a sister...or a brother. At least nobody their age. 

And even though everyone knew about the Blakes, about how their mother had protected Octavia by keeping her hidden under the floor—it was jarring to actually see them standing at the entrance of the hall, side by side. 

It clicked then that Clarke had seen him at the ministry because of his sister, because their mom had died to save their lives. 

She felt a little guilty that all she’d noticed at the time was how pretty his face was. 

Murmurs sounded from around the table, about floorboards and the war and Alie. 

But Professor Kane quelled the whispers, beckoning for the siblings to come to the front of the room. 

“Well, I see no reason to make a big deal out of this. Welcome to Hogwarts, Octavia,” he said evenly, gesturing for her to take a seat on the stool before placing the hat on her head himself. 

Bellamy stood off to the side, lip caught between his teeth as he watched the hat mull over where his sister belonged. 

“Gryffindor,” the hat bellowed, and there was a beat of silence before the three second years across from Clarke started a roar of cheers. 

Not wanting to miss out on the action, Clarke and Monty made room for Octavia to sit between them. 

But Bellamy didn’t join his sister at the table. Instead, he and Kane disappeared off into a door tucked into the side of the hall. 

There wasn’t much time for Clarke to give Bellamy any more thought, not when plate after plate of food appeared at the center of the table. 

The spread felt overwhelming after the long wait for the sorting ceremony, and she didn’t know where to start. 

Wells waved at Clarke with a leg of chicken in hand from across the massive hall, looking the most relaxed he had in weeks. 

He pointed to the chicken excitedly and then held up a minced pie in his other hand, her favorite. 

She waved back at him, reaching for a minced pie of her own and holding it up for a distance cheers. Even if they weren’t in the same house, things would be okay. They would still be best friends like always. Except now, they had more friends than just each other. 

Octavia intrigued Clarke with her weird entrance and shiny dark hair and tie that was slightly too big for the rest of her uniform. She’d never had a best friend that was a girl before, and this seemed like a good place to start. And she already felt like she’d known Monty for her entire life. He was just easy to be with. 

“I thought that was a cool entrance,” Clarke said, nudging Octavia gently. “I bet nobody’s done that before.” 

The smaller girl blushed and tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Yeah, we're the first pair of siblings in two generations...I should probably get used to sticking out in a crowd,” she shrugged, looking up at the two older kids sitting across from them. 

“If anyone ever calls you the girl under the floorboards, tell them that they can take it up with us,” the older girl said with a soft smile.

She introduced herself as Raven and the boy beside her as Murphy. She took the time to ask each of their names, and it seemed like she genuinely wanted to remember them for later. Clarke decided she liked her, especially since she had a cool red streak in her hair. 

“If anyone messes with you, let us know. Okay?” Murphy added, flicking a pea in Octavia’s direction even though it seemed like he was trying to be nice. 

After the introductions, Octavia whispered quietly to Clarke and Monty that Murphy liked to get in fights and that Bellamy had his first kiss with Raven at the end of last year. 

Clarke had no interest in kissing, it was gross, and she didn’t think boys were good for anything other than being friends. But she also didn’t know very many boys. And yet, the idea of Bellamy kissing Raven made her stomach twist, and it made her like Raven a little less, even though it shouldn’t matter. 

She wondered what it would be like to kiss a boy or maybe even a girl. The thought of putting her mouth on someone else’s wasn’t very appealing, especially when she could see a boy shoveling pie in his mouth from across the hall. 

It wasn’t something she wanted to do yet, but maybe when she did, she would like to do it with Bellamy. His mouth seemed rather lovely, even if she’d only seen it for a moment. 

“Have you ever kissed anybody?” She asked Monty as she added a piece of dessert onto her plate. Hopefully, it didn’t make him annoyed or make him think she wanted to kiss him, but Clarke was curious. She didn’t want to seem like a baby. 

“I don’t know a lot of girls,” Monty answered, unbothered by her personal question. “I only know Jasper, and he doesn’t know any girls either.” 

“I don’t really know anybody. I’ve never really had friends before,” Octavia added bluntly, taking both Clarke and Monty by surprise. “Just my brother.” 

She didn’t have a best friend? 

The idea of having gone eleven years without a friend made Clarke a little sad. She’d always had Wells to play with and talk to and share secrets with. It would have been very lonely without him. It was probably very lonely for Octavia, especially after Bellamy came to Hogwarts. 

“Well, we’re your friends now,” Clarke announced, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and the other around Monty’s. 

Dinner passed in getting to know the other Gryffindors and excited chatter with her new friends. The more time she spent with Octavia and Monty, the more Clarke liked them. 

***

  
“My mom said I snore, so sorry if I wake any of you up,” Maya said sheepishly, arranging her trunk in front of her bed. 

The girls' dormitory was smaller than Clarke imagined, with four curtain-covered beds tucked in each corner of the room. It hadn’t seemed so small when they were being sorted, but apparently, there were only four girls in their year. 

She’d chosen the bed next to Octavia’s and across from a round-cheeked girl named Harper who kept asking questions about Monty. 

“It’s a slumber party!” Octavia exclaimed, pulling a pillow to her chest, practically vibrating with excitement. “Like in the books.” 

“We should do something fun!” Clarke agreed, pulling on her robe and jumping across the room onto Octavia’s bed. 

They collapsed into a fit of giggles, both listing off ridiculous games that they’d only read about in stories. But Harper and Maya did not seem as excited as they were and told them to go to the common room if they wanted to play games. 

It made sense that they were tired, it’d been a long day, but Hogwarts was far too exciting for sleep. 

Clarke had dreamed about this her entire life, listened to stories from her parents and Wells’ dad. Sometimes her dad used to let her wear his Gryffindor scarf and fly her toy broomstick around the living room. The fact that she was finally here, that it was all real and she’d already found another best friend—it felt too good to be true. 

The common room still had a few people sitting in it, playing games of chess or reading books. But apparently, a lot of people agreed with Harper and Maya and just wanted to sleep. 

“I wish we could go get Monty,” Octavia sighed, flipping down on the couch. “There are so many good games for three people.” 

Clarke agreed, sitting by her friend in front of the fireplace as they both watched the flames crackle. 

Across the room, Raven and Murphy both had books in their laps but were whispering about something back and forth. 

“They’re talking about Bellamy,” Octavia said, dropping her voice so low that Clarke could barely hear her. “He still isn’t back from his talk with Professor Kane.” 

And she looked worried, so Clarke started to worry too. Did they expel people from Hogwarts? Where would Bellamy go? They were only an hour late. Certainly, Kane would understand. 

“Should we go look for him?” She asked, not wanting to step on Raven and Murphy’s toes but sensing that Octavia would probably go by herself if she didn’t offer. 

If she’d never had any friends before, Bellamy was her best friend, and Clarke would sneak out in the middle of the night to find Wells if he was missing. 

“We gotta wait until they’re not looking,” Octavia nodded, training her eyes on the two older kids. 

This didn’t necessarily seem like a smart idea, but it didn’t feel like there was any other option. 

Like Jake Griffin always said, getting in trouble is half the fun. 

They spent entirely too long staring, to the point that Clarke started to wonder if she would like to kiss Murphy. But something about the way he smirked made her extremely angry. He looked like he thought he was right about everything. 

Raven was pretty, especially her eyes, but the image of her kissing Bellamy still made Clarke cringe. 

Once again, she concluded that she was not ready for kissing. 

“Why aren’t they moving,” Octavia groaned, sliding down on the couch just as an older girl called Raven over to play a game of chess. Thankfully, Murphy followed to watch the pieces smash each other. 

As carefully as they could manage, they crept out of the common room, through the portrait, and into the hall. 

The fat lady was asleep, not aware enough to ask them questions about where they were going after curfew, and with the added cover of dimmed lights, they were in the clear. 

It was quite hard to see with just the candles hanging on the walls and the glow of distant chandeliers. They made it past two sets of staircases before Octavia tripped and skinned her knee on a stair. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” Clarke asked, directing them around a corner. As it turned out, all the hallways looked exactly the same, and when the staircases moved, it became very hard to remember where they came from. 

They were lost. 

“I thought I did, but I don’t think I do anymore,” Octavia admitted, sliding down and leaning on the wall. 

“There has to be something we can do. We can’t just sit here until morning.” 

“I have my wand. Do you know any magic?” She asked, holding out a very pretty deep red, ivy-laced wand. “Bellamy wouldn’t teach me anything until I got to school. He said we would get in trouble, and my muggle aunt would be really mad.” 

Clarke had never done magic with a wand before. But she’d seen her parents do spells loads of times around the house and even tried to copy her dad when nobody was looking. It couldn’t be tough to do it like they did.

They would probably be able to find out where they were going if they could see better. 

“I’ve seen my mom do a spell that makes a light come out of your wand. Like a torch. Do you want me to try it?” She asked, taking the wand very gently and hoping nothing bad would happen if she used someone else’s. 

“Anything is better than sitting on the floor and waiting to get caught.” 

Clarke adjusted her grip with a deep breath and practiced the words a few times in her head. Hopefully, the magic would know what to do on its own if she got close to the spell. 

“Lumos,” she said, waving the wand in a circle and closing her eyes. The moment the word left her mouth, she knew that she hadn’t said it correctly. 

Nothing happened, and she almost pulled the wand back toward her body when a shrill screech sounded, and not one, not two, but three fireworks burst from the tip of the wand. 

Clarke almost dropped it in shock as three bright red balls of sparks crackled and shimmered around them. 

They were almost certainly going to be caught with all the light and the noise. 

Sure enough, not even a second later, a door opened, and Kane appeared in front of them—followed by Bellamy. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bellamy groaned, looking between the two of them and then at Octavia’s wand in Clarke’s hand. 

Apparently, they’d been closer to their destination than they’d thought. 

The downside was that Bellamy definitely thought Clarke was stupid now. 

_***_   
_2011_   
_Clarke’s Second Year_   
_Bellamy’s Third Year_

“They’re doing something nice for us, okay? But that doesn’t make us charity cases. If they offer to pay for anything, just politely tell them you already have money,” Bellamy explained carefully, grabbing his sister’s hand just as it was hovering a few inches from the door. 

He knew she didn’t understand that they didn’t have money and that Clarke had a lot of it. In her head, it didn’t connect that this house was massive and beautiful, and they shared a bedroom in a flat in the middle of muggle London. 

But he knew, and he knew they’d been invited here because Kane was friends with Clarke’s mom. They all felt guilty that his mom died in the war, and the rest of them came out okay enough to raise their kids in houses like this. 

It was nice of them, and he knew they needed all the help they could get, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. 

Plus, Clarke was always looking at him. Kind of like she was trying to decode his face like a puzzle. He didn’t know what to do with it other than let her because there was no polite way to tell someone to stop looking at you every five seconds. She was fine, but Bellamy didn’t really want to be friends with her either—she was kind of bossy even though she was younger than him. 

He had to admit she was impressive though, by all accounts, she was the smartest kid in her grade, according to Miller, who’d been held back in potions anyway. And according to Raven, she would make the Quidditch team this year. 

Not that he cared anyway. Clarke was just his little sister’s best friend—that’s it. 

“Can we go inside now?” Octavia groaned, flopping her head back dramatically while Bellamy stared at the door. 

He nodded, and his sister banged on the door harder than she should have. 

Clarke appeared a few seconds later, now a few inches shorter than Octavia, who’d grown over the summer. Both girls squealed and jumped and yelled and talked over each other about their summers. A few moments later, Monty appeared, and while he didn’t scream, he seemed just as excited as the other two. 

Unsure what to do with himself, Bellamy stepped around the welcome party and thanked Clarke’s parents for having them over. Her dad was really nice, and Bellamy remembered him from when he and O would spend hours waiting for paperwork in the Ministry of Magic because nobody knew what to do with siblings. Come to think of it, Clarke had stared at him back then too. 

“You look just like your mom,” Jake grinned, swinging an arm around Bellamy’s shoulders and introducing him to the other adults in the room. It took him a moment to realize that one of them was the literal Minister of Magic, and then he just stood speechless while Thelonious Jaha proceeded to talk to him.   
He asked the standard questions about school and quidditch and his grades, before the adults turned back to their conversation. 

They seemed to forget that he was standing there, but something about their hushed whispers made Bellamy want to listen. 

Abby and Kane talked about the war, just like everyone always did, but their smiles didn’t quite meet their eyes, and something about it made Bellamy feel very unsettled. 

It was as if they thought the war wasn’t actually over—which was, of course, impossible. 

Kane told him that Alie had been killed years ago by Clarke’s mom. 

Bellamy didn’t exactly have a frame of reference to go off, but he was pretty sure that people didn’t talk about the past with a tinge of remaining fear. 

Why were they still calling Alie, ‘she who must not be named’ if she was dead? 

It just didn’t make sense. 

But before he could ask about it, even though he already knew that nobody would answer him, Octavia grabbed his hand. She began chatting excitedly about their trip to the London eye this summer in Muggle London. 

Really it had been nothing. It was an outing that school children do on the weekend, probably the only nice thing their aunt would ever do for them, but Octavia seemed to think it was the best thing in the world. Bellamy was glad she seemed happy, even though he didn’t really know how to add to the conversation. 

“What did it look like all the way up there? Was it like riding a broom?” Jasper asked, pushing his goggles further up on his forehead.

And that was an opportunity to very carefully extract himself. 

“I hear you’re trying out for Quidditch?” Bellamy asked, tapping on Clarke’s shoulder. He always found it more manageable to talk to one person at a time rather than in a group. 

“Yeah! I’ve been practicing all summer, and it’s been SO fun. My dad was a seeker, and he taught me lots of cool flying tips, but I think I want to be a chaser,” she said, eyes lighting up with excitement. “You’re a seeker, aren’t you?” 

“Yup, although sometimes I play beater too. We need chasers, so you probably have a good chance.” 

Clarke nodded, rambling about her favorite chaser from the Hollyhead Harpies in a way that was kind of endearing. 

“My dad and I practice every morning. You can join us if you want. He really likes you. He keeps telling my mom that you’re a good egg. I don’t really know what that means, but it must be pretty good,” she shrugged, unaware that Bellamy was caught off guard by the compliment. He wasn’t used to people saying nice things about him when he wasn’t around. Usually, he just got pitying stares and hushed whispers. 

It made him like Jake Griffin just a little bit more. 

“Yeah, I’d like that,” he agreed, before switching the topic to who Clarke thought was going to win the quidditch World Cup this year. 

And maybe he was wrong before. Perhaps he would like to be Clarke’s friend.

***

  
The school year started more or less the same, with the sorting ceremony and the boring first few days of classes and talking about their summers. 

Settling into school always kind of sucked, but this year was the least eventful, and that was kind of a relief. First year came with all the confusion of a new place, and second year had all the stress of Octavia coming to Hogwarts. 

But this year—Bellamy could just be normal. 

Well, as normal as he could be anyway. Aside from still keeping an eye on his sister and his check-ins with Kane that never felt very productive, things were business as usual. 

He was excited to just do his schoolwork and go to Quidditch practice and hang out with Murphy and Raven. Maybe they would even get to go to Hogsmeade a few times. 

“Are you coming to tryouts?” Miller asked, shaking his broomstick as he crossed Bellamy in the common room. 

“I can’t, I uhh—have to work on this essay,” Bellamy explained, catching himself before he said anything about his meetings with Kane. Nobody knew about them. Well, nobody except Octavia and Clarke, who had set off fireworks in the middle of the night last year when they tried to come looking for him. 

Sweet, but totally ridiculous. 

Kane found the whole thing absolutely hilarious, though—he’d given them both banana candy and laughed so hard that he didn’t even bother punishing them. 

He wasn’t sure what it was about him and his sister that Kane found so fascinating. Other than them being siblings, there was nothing exciting about them. But he always went and ate his lunch and answered all the questions he was asked. 

Bellamy never asked any questions in return, even though he usually wanted to. That just wasn’t how the meetings went. 

After spending a few weeks at Clarke’s house, he had even more questions--especially about the war. But he knew that asking about it would just lead to trouble. He liked going to Clarke’s house, and he didn’t want to risk not being invited back because of eavesdropping. 

“Hey, good luck out there. Not that you need it,” he called to Clarke as he passed her on the stairs.

And he meant it. 

After practicing with her and her dad before school, he would be utterly shocked if she didn’t make the team. 

“You’re not coming?” She asked, and Bellamy could tell she was disappointed. He didn’t know why she would care whether he was there, but it made him feel guilty. 

“Can’t, I’ve got something I can’t reschedule,” he said and found that he was genuinely sorry about it. “Let me know how it goes through.” 

The longer this went on, the more Bellamy resented these pointless meetings with Kane. 

He almost said so when he stepped into the office, but the older man looked tired and irritated already—it was best not to annoy him further. 

“How was your stay with the Griffins?” He asked, pouring a cup of tea and sliding it across the desk. 

“They’re very nice, and I think Octavia really likes having Clarke around.” 

“I thought it might be best that you have some help with the platform after last time--with your grand entrance.” 

“It’s much easier with a car, yeah. Jake was really nice about all of it. He even helped Octavia keep her cat from jumping off the cart.” 

They talked back and forth about mundane things, his classes, the Quidditch team, his promise to serve fewer detentions this year with Murphy, and their summer spent with their aunt. 

“I don’t know. She’s our only family, but it’s just so boring there, and we can’t use magic. The neighbors look at the owls weird, so we can’t use those either,” he shrugged, knowing it sounded ungrateful, but he was frustrated by it. “I feel like we’re missing everything sometimes.” 

“It’s what’s best for you right now,” Kane said matter of factly. “But the Griffins would love to have you over for a few weeks next summer if that’s something you’d like. Perhaps we could even talk about making it a yearly thing.” 

Bellamy thought back to his conversation with Clarke and his mornings spent with her and Jake, of the sweater Abby had let him borrow and then told him to keep. It was only later that Clarke told him that she’d knit it for him over the summer. She’d given one to Octavia too. 

He liked the Griffins, they felt like a real family, and he’d never really understood what that looked like until a few weeks ago. He didn’t like pity, but he did want more Quidditch mornings and porridge breakfasts and radio nights by the fire, and he wanted that for Octavia too. 

“Yeah, I think I would like that.” 

“I’m glad to hear it,” Kane grinned, but his voice took on that weird tone that made Bellamy feel a bit unsettled. 

He didn’t know what exactly, but Kane definitely knew something he didn’t. 

***

  
Bellamy made it out of his meeting just in time to see the team pour into the common room, cheering and shouting and chanting. 

“You’re looking at our newest chaser and our newest beater!” Murphy bellowed, ruffling Harper and Clarke’s hair. 

“You did it,” Bellamy grinned, holding his arms out as Clarke flew into him, and he picked her up, spinning her around, just because he could. “I knew you would, but it’s still pretty awesome.” 

“I’m really excited,” Clarke squealed, squeezing him one more time before she went to go hug Monty. 

It was cute, and he was glad they’d seen how good she is. They might actually have a chance at winning, and if that meant he could beat Gabriel this year, it might just be the best year ever. 

“I think we have a real shot at beating Slytherin with those two,” he said to Miller, handing his friend a cup of water. 

“Here’s to hoping, man. Their new chaser got the entire team new brooms. It’s fucking ridiculous.” 

Clarke reappeared beside Bellamy with a sharp frown etched into her features. 

“Ugh, you mean Josephine?” She groaned, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect. “She sucks.” 

“You know her?” 

“Yeah, she’s sacred twenty-eight or whatever, and she thinks that makes her the queen of the world. Wells is terrified of her.” 

The sacred twenty-eight were wizarding royalty basically—families whose bloodlines could be traced back as far as magic itself. Most of them were in Slytherin and were insufferably stuck up. 

It hadn’t occurred to Bellamy that Clarke’s mom was part of it too, and so was Wells’ dad, but maybe it was because they just seemed so normal to him. 

They’d also fought on the right side of the war, so that helped too. 

“She can’t be very good if her father is buying brooms for the entire team.” 

“She isn’t. But now we have to be extra good so she can’t win,” Clarke said with a smug smile before turning in her heel and disappearing back into the crowd. 

Bellamy chuckled to himself. Clarke was definitely growing on him. 

***

The first quidditch game of the season was always Bellamy’s favorite. There was a specific thrill in wearing the uniform for the first time, of being back in the air with the crowd roaring. 

He adjusted his grip on the broom, kicking off from the slightly damp dirt before he lifted off into the air. It rained the night before, and a faint chill lingered in the breeze, catching in his curls as he flew a few laps around the pitch. 

With a few stretches of his shoulders, he joined the rest of the team in the huddle. Miller went over a few last-minute strategies, warning Murphy not to get too aggressive with the other team, no matter how much he wanted to. 

“And good luck to our newbies, Clarke and Harper. Give 'em hell for us,” he said as the rest of the team cheered. From across the circle, Bellamy gave Clarke a thumbs up, and she winked in response. 

A whistle blew a few moments later, and they were off. 

Slytherin always played dirty, and this game was no exception. Gabriel really gave Bellamy a run for his money as he elbowed him sharply in the stomach. 

The snitch was nowhere to be seen, and he could tell Murphy and Miller were both starting to get nervous. 

And the new chaser, the one who bought the new brooms, kept tailing Clarke, cornering her away from everyone else until the ball had whizzed past. 

“This is freaking brutal,” Harper panted, bracing her hands on the front of her broom as she caught her breath. 

Bellamy nodded, giving her a few minutes to recover while he guarded their area of the field. 

As he scanned for nearby gaps in their defense, he caught sight of a little gold flash hovering a few feet away. 

But just as quickly as he’d seen it, Gabriel came flying from across the field. 

If he could just reach it first, this would be over. With the snitch inches from his grasp, he dove, hoping he could scoop down and grab it. 

He was within reach when he heard a sharp scream, so loud that everyone froze in place. The snitch flitted off out of sight just as Bellamy turned to see Clarke hanging upside down from her broom. 

The sight of it made his heart drop—she was a good flyer, not the kind to make a mistake that would throw her off balance. 

She then flipped back up, yanking left and right violently and then flipping back upside down again. 

Clarke was already barely hanging on when the broom suddenly plummeted midair, and with the game already out of his mind, Bellamy dove after her. 

He managed to grab her and pull her onto his own broom before her broom took a nosedive violently into the grass. 

They barely had a second to recover and regain their height, Clarke’s body violently shivering in his arms when his broom started to jerk around too. 

“Let go! Let go of the effing broom,” Miller screamed, as they started hurtling down at a 90-degree angle. 

And then they were falling. 

It all happened so fast that Bellamy had no clue what direction was up and what was down. But he did have the presence of mind to let go of Clarke before they hit the ground, not wanting to crush her from the force of their fall. 

The actual impact hurt worse than he imagined, his vision blacking out for a moment as he regained his balance. 

Clarke lay less than a foot away, covered in dirt with a nasty scratch on her face. The angle her left arm was bent looked a bit sickening. 

As hordes of adults, classmates, and friends screamed and came storming at them, Clarke rolled a bit closer. 

“It wasn’t for nothing,” she said, pressing the snitch into his palm. 

Her voice was hoarse and broken, but the smile she gave him felt like something secret between them. 

“You’re full of surprises, Griffin,” he chuckled, wincing when his laughter pulled at his sore ribs. 

Near-death experience or not, they’d won the game. 

***

  
“Bellamy, are you awake?” Clarke whispered, bare feet tapping on the tile floor as she pushed aside the curtains around his bed. 

“Yeah, the potions she gave me are kind of the worst,” he shrugged, grateful that Clarke chose to sit in the nearby chair instead of at the end of his bed. He wasn’t sure why, but something about her getting too close made it hard to think straight. 

“The blood replenishing potion tastes like puke.” 

“And it makes you feel like your veins are pushing out of your skin.” 

They commiserated about their injuries and laughed about the look on Gabriel’s face when Bellamy had held up the snitch. The whole team had stormed into the hospital wing after dinnertime, thrilled that they’d managed to win despite the drama. 

“Do you have any idea what happened out there?” Clarke asked, seeming for the first time since Bellamy met her, like she was unsure. 

He wanted to tell her about the weird vibe he’d gotten from her parents and Jaha, that they seemed to think something dark was looming still. But he didn’t know how to explain it without sounding crazy. Alie was dead. She wasn’t the problem here—but something or someone had been trying to kill them both earlier. 

“I have a feeling that we’re in for more of whatever that was, but I don’t know why,” he sighed, trying his best not to scare Clarke, but he had a terrible feeling about all this. 

_***_   
_Summer_

Bellamy sat back in the grass, catching his breath as he watched Octavia and Clarke try to wrestle a gnome out from behind a bush. 

Finally, they tore it free, and Clarke gave it a sharp kick over the fence, grinning to herself as it flew out of sight. 

And Bellamy wasn’t staring at her or anything, but he noticed that she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth like she always did when she was proud of herself. She did it a lot during quidditch practice, and he kind of liked how it made her eyes light up. 

“You’re staring,” Murphy chuckled, bumping their shoulders as he came to sit beside Bellamy in the grass. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he shrugged, immediately pulling his gaze away from Clarke to watch Jasper, Monty, and Wells sword fight with branches. 

“Sure…whatever you say,” Murphy teased, but he didn’t push the topic any further, steering the conversation back toward their chores. “How many more gnomes do we have left?” 

“I’m pretty sure that was the last one,” Bellamy said, patting the grass to indicate that there was nothing left to find. “They’re nasty little buggers.” 

“They’re more than nasty. One of them bit me,” Clarke said, patting the top of Bellamy’s head as she and Octavia also flopped down onto the grass. Her curls fell into her eyes a bit, and she pushed them away before she laid back, her shoulder just barely skimming his. 

“Did it leave a mark?” he asked, holding out his hand so he could inspect her damaged finger. Sure enough, there were two small teeth marks etched into her skin. “Ouch.” 

“Will I be able to save it?” she replied, barely holding in a laugh as he studied her injury with a furrowed brow. 

“Might have to just remove the whole thing.” 

They bantered back and forth until Bellamy’s sides ached from laughter. Octavia and Murphy grew tired of their jokes fairly quickly, leaving them to join the sword fight. 

Admittedly, it was pretty stupid, and he didn’t care. It felt good to be with his friends, to spend time outside, to be himself, and not have to worry about anything. 

Contentment wasn’t an emotion he got to feel often. 

Most of his childhood had been pretty stressful, caring for Octavia, making sure that she stayed a secret—and later, keeping them both alive, keeping their magic a secret from their Muggle neighbors. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he laid in the grass and stared up at the sky. 

“Do you see that cloud over there? It kind of looks like Murphy,” Clarke asked, nudging a bit closer so she could point to a cluster of clouds that looked like shaggy hair. 

“I see it. It’s the bangs, isn’t it?” he grinned, pushing down the urge to reach out and take Clarke’s hand. 

Bellamy didn’t know where all this had suddenly come from. Last year, he’d thought that Clarke was just his little sister’s friend. 

But after the quidditch accident, she became his friend too. Almost dying together had a way of bonding you to a person. 

It didn’t feel like a big deal at the time. They would just do homework together sometimes or practice quidditch drills or play cards in the common room. But lately, he’d been noticing things about her—little things mainly, like how her nose wrinkled when she laughed and how she always looked at him right after she made a joke. He started wanting to spend more and more time with her, and every time they were together, he couldn’t stop smiling. 

It wasn’t a crush, though. 

Clarke was his sister’s best friend. She was off-limits. 

They were just good friends. Nothing more. 

A crush would ruin everything, make everything awkward. 

  
So he decided he would simply not have a crush on Clarke. 

“Are you excited for this year?” he asked, pushing away his thoughts of holding her hand. The more he thought about it, the more confusing things would get. 

There was a long pause as she continued to look up at the sky, the clouds shifting until the shaggy white one almost disappeared from view. 

“I thought I would be more excited. But I guess I just wanted to see everyone,” she said carefully, turning on her side so she could face him. “I have a weird feeling about going back to Hogwarts.” 

Oddly enough, Bellamy knew what she meant. He’d been feeling it too, a pit in his stomach, a feeling of dread that he couldn’t quite shake. Every time he thought about Hogwarts, he felt deeply uncomfortable. 

“Are you worried about another accident with the brooms?” he asked, already knowing that flying wasn’t the problem. They’d been practicing every morning with Jake since Bellamy arrived, and Clarke was still as good as ever. 

“No. I just feel like…” 

“Like something bad is going to happen,” he finished, already knowing what she was about to say. It should weird him out that they were so in-sync, but after the broom accident, he’d stopped trying to apply logic to anything. 

And Clarke nodded. 

She didn’t seem particularly surprised that he’d picked up on it too, whatever it was. 

For everyone’s sake, Bellamy really hoped they were wrong. 

_***_   
_2012_   
_Clarke’s Third Year_   
_Bellamy’s Fourth Year_

Nobody was saying anything. 

Not a word. 

The entire room sat staring at the fireplace, just waiting. 

Clarke’s mom and Thelonious disappeared hours ago, right after Kane escorted them back to the house via floo. 

She couldn’t believe her mom was more worried about damage control, about the public finding out than she was about her husband making it out okay. 

It felt like her dad was the only one who cared about Monty, Harper, and Jasper going missing. 

A loud sob sounded from where Miller sat, tucked between Bellamy and Murphy. He’d been inconsolable since they found out Harper was missing. He blamed himself for not keeping a better eye on her, even though none of them could have seen this coming. 

It scared Clarke to see everyone like this, some of the strongest people she knew falling apart, her mom acting like things were business as usual. 

“How did we not notice?” Octavia whispered, chewing on the end of her sleeve. “Monty, Harper, and Jasper have been acting weird for weeks.”

“How could we have known they were going to get kidnapped?” Clarke replied, wrapping an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “They were just supposed to be serving detention.” 

They continued to sit and wait, with Kane kneeling in front of the fireplace, clearly desperate for an answer as to where everyone was. 

And after what felt like an eternity, Clarke’s mother’s face appeared in the ashes. 

Her voice was hushed, more like a whisper, and Clarke couldn’t hear what they were saying. But even without words, it didn’t seem like good news. 

“I uhh, have explicit instructions for Mr. Miller and Miss. Blake to floo to St. Mungo’s hospital immediately,” Kane announced, bracing his hands on his knees as he straightened. “Mr. Murphy, you are to report to the Ministry of Magic, Miss. Reyes will accompany you.” 

But nobody moved, everyone equally confused and concerned by his instructions. 

No answers, no assurances, just a stoic, no-nonsense stare. 

From across the room, Clarke met Bellamy’s gaze. It didn’t feel like a coincidence that they hadn’t been given instructions yet. 

Her mind drifted back to their conversation from the summer, how they’d both known that something wasn’t right. 

Trouble just kept finding them lately. First with the brooms at the quidditch match and then earlier this year when they’d been chased into the woods by a herd of stray dementors. 

It was only fitting that Kane was making them stay behind. 

“Please do not make me ask you twice,” Kane said sternly, still not quite meeting their eyes.

But still, nobody moved. 

“What’s going on?” Bellamy finally asked, breaking the silence as he crossed the room to stand beside Clarke and Octavia. “You can’t just expect us to pretend like nothing happened. Our friends went missing…” 

“I know tonight has been very stressful for all of you. It’s been stressful for me as well. I do have some good news…” 

“We’re not sitting here because you have good news,” Clarke snapped, immediately regretting the tone she used, but she knew that the explanation was going to be purposely vague. Her mother would make sure of that. She could not care less about fabricated good news, not when people she cared about might be hurt. 

Bellamy exhaled loudly, like he could tell she was spiraling down a very angry road. He placed a hand on her shoulder, solid and reassuring but also a warning that if she lunged—he would hold her down. She wasn’t usually one to act out, but right now, she was five seconds away from giving the headmaster a piece of her mind. 

Kane’s expression softened as he looked around the room, taking in their terrified faces. With a sigh, he finally let himself sit in an overstuffed chair, running a hand through his hair. 

“I was instructed not to tell you this. But you’re right. It isn’t fair to keep you in the dark. I would rather you hear it from me than from someone else,” he sighed, eyes flicking back toward the fireplace. “Mr. Green and Miss. Macintyre have been transported to St. Mungo’s…they are in bad shape, but they will be okay.” 

Miller let out an audible sigh of relief, a shocked sob following as he hugged Raven. 

But Clarke felt her stomach churn, and she reached out to grab Bellamy’s wrist, needing something to hold onto. 

There was more, and from the look on Kane’s face, it would not be good news. 

“And I’m very sorry to say that Jasper Jordan has suffered fatal injuries. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.” 

The entire room burst into chaos, and Clarke felt like she couldn’t breathe. Everyone was talking over one another. Some were crying, some were yelling, and Kane looked thoroughly in over his head. 

Jasper was dead. 

She just held onto Bellamy’s wrist, listening as Marcus tried to comfort Octavia and direct everyone to their correct locations. 

But the chaos continued, only growing louder and more out of control as time went on. 

“Everyone stop,” she yelled, stomping her foot as hard as she could. “Harper and Monty need us—Jasper too.” 

Her voice cracked as his name left her lips, as she came to terms with the fact that she would never call him name again. 

Jasper would never get to grow up. He would never be able to do all the things he was supposed to. 

It just didn’t feel fair. 

“They need us,” she repeated, unable to stop the tears from falling down her cheeks. 

The room fell silent. 

“Who is with him right now?” Octavia asked, rubbing her eyes with the back of her sleeve, the tears still slipping down her cheeks. 

“With who?” Kane replied, looking at Bellamy with a pinched, pained expression. It was clear he hadn’t anticipated having to deal with a group of traumatized and grieving kids. 

“She’s asking about Jasper,” Bellamy supplied, his grip on Clarke’s shoulder tightening as he spoke. His voice sounded cracked, too, like he was just barely holding himself together. 

And Clarke cursed the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. She wanted to be strong too. She needed to be strong. She couldn’t let Bellamy carry this alone. 

The second he said it, Clarke knew where this was going, and she knew that there was nothing Kane could do to stop it. If there was one thing Clarke knew for sure, it was that Octavia didn’t leave people behind. 

“That’s not really…” he began, but Octavia interrupted. 

“I’m going to stay with him until his parents come. Raven can wait with Monty,” she replied firmly, crossing her arms across her chest. “Monty will understand. He wouldn’t want Jasper to be alone right now either.” 

“Abby was very…” 

“Forget what my mom said. She’s acting as if everything is fine when it’s obviously not. She wanted you to lie to us,” Clarke interrupted, nodding toward Murphy, who held an arm out for Octavia in response. “Our friend is dead. He was thirteen years old, and he is all alone.” 

“Please…let us have this one thing,” Bellamy added, nudging Octavia in the right direction. “Let us do right by him.” 

Clearly worn out and emotionally drained, Kane held up his hands, resigning himself to the fact that he had no control over the situation.

And one by one, each of them filed out of the room, vanishing through the fireplace in a flash of green. 

Until only Bellamy and Clarke were left. 

Once the ashes had died down once again, Kane sat heavily on the couch and nodded for them to sit across from him. 

They obliged, Bellamy’s arm pressed tightly against Clarke’s. The comfort of his presence, knowing that someone else was just as lost as she was, served as the only thing stopping her from screaming in Kane’s face. 

All her emotions were jumbled. She’d never been so empty and confused and furious all at the same time. 

It just didn’t make sense. 

How could a Hogwarts professor do something like this? Why had nobody known that Professor McCreary was a murderer? 

And even more pressing, why did it seem like her dad was the only person who cared? 

The entire Ministry of Magic had just let Jasper die. 

Kane hadn’t even shed a tear. 

Clarke didn’t understand how he could be so calm, how he could sit there and give out instructions like they were on a weekend trip to Hogsmede. 

If it weren’t for Bellamy, she would’ve lost her mind. 

The warmth of his arm against hers, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the sharp, warm scent of his cologne, grounded her and kept her from doing something she would probably regret. 

And she hoped, somehow, she did the same thing for him. 

“So...why us? Why are we still here?” Bellamy asked, turning his palm so that she could hold his hand. 

“I have reason to believe that what happened to you both last year had something to do with tonight’s events,” Kane explained, seemingly stabilizing himself as he spoke. “But I seem to be alone in this belief.” 

“Meaning my mother and Thelonious have other ideas…” Clarke sighed, letting her thumb trace the back of Bellamy’s knuckles in slow circles. 

Her mom had gone off the deep end. 

Clarke had never seen her like this, the way that she acted when they first heard that Jake had gone into the forest to save her friends. 

She hadn’t even flinched. 

Instead, she grabbed Thelonius and jumped in the floo--to go to the Ministry. Because, of course, work always came first. 

And Kane’s silence told her everything she needed to know. 

She was right. 

“So what do you think?” She asked, rubbing the bump on her wrist that remained from her fall on the quidditch pitch. 

Kane seemed to hesitate, like he didn’t want to cloud her view of her mom. Little did he know that the damage was done when her dad ran to save her friends, and her mom rushed to stop the story from reaching The Daily Prophet—at this point, there wasn’t much he could say to make her angrier. 

“I think professor McCreary acted alone, for reasons I can’t quite pin down…” 

“He’s weird as hell. Why would anyone disagree? A creepy teacher with a blood purity obsession kidnaps a muggleborn student and tortures him in the woods. Suspiciously, the pureblood and the half-blood survive. Sounds pretty believable to me,” Bellamy added, brow furrowed in confusion. “That shit is medieval. I can’t believe you hired him” 

It was harsh. But he had a point. Blood purity ideals only really remained in pockets of pureblood circles. Most people would consider comments about dirty blood and lineage to be inappropriate and discriminatory. Clarke had always been taught not to mention it, that it wasn’t something that really mattered. 

She’d never even heard the word mudblood spoken aloud until it came out of her teacher’s mouth. 

Sure, they all talked about the sacred twenty-eight, but it was more like a club than an ideology at this point—at least that’s what she’d always been led to believe. 

But maybe Clarke had been naive to think that. Professor McCreary had a reputation for being unstable among the Gryffindors, but the Slytherins rarely seemed to find anything wrong with his behavior. In fact, Josephine and her friends practically preened when he’d rambled on and on about their ancient lineage. 

“Like I said, I agree with you. But unfortunately, I don’t have much power when it comes to the Ministry. If they don’t want to investigate Professor McCreary, they will simply sweep all this under the rug. Jasper Jordan’s death will be deemed a tragic accident and nothing more,” he sighed, pausing like he wanted to say more, but he stopped himself. 

As Clarke mulled over everything she’d just learned, unpacking all the things she’d been taught as a child, she realized that in all her anger and grief and shock...she hadn’t asked about her dad. 

A new wave of panic pulsed through her as she tried to find the words to ask, wondering why nobody had mentioned it before. 

Perhaps he was just at the Ministry or at the hospital. 

But the lack of confirmation from Kane, left Clarke with a pit in her stomach. 

She knew by now that when adults purposely glossed over details, they were trying to hide something. But they wouldn’t be able to hide this from her forever. 

“What about my dad?” she asked, bristling when Kane’s face twisted into something resembling pity. 

“Clarke…” he began, scrubbing a hand over his face, suddenly looking much older than he had a few hours ago. 

“If you tell me anything about my mother not wanting me to know, I will stun you and go to the Ministry myself. I do not care if I get expelled,” Clarke snapped, knowing that she was crossing a line, but right now, in her panicked state, she didn’t care. “Is my dad alive?” 

Bellamy moved to bracket her narrow frame with his arm, pulling her into his side. It served as a comfort, but it also kept her very firmly seated on the couch. He understood better than most people that she did not make empty threats, not when it came to her family. Usually, she would have shrugged him off, but right now, she was grateful to have someone to lean on, glad that she wasn’t having this conversation by herself. 

She was being brave right now, but if things were really as bad as she feared, she would need him. 

“He is alive...but things are complicated.”

“Is he hurt?” 

Once again, Kane looked to the fireplace, like he was half expecting Abby to appear from the ashes. But she never did. 

“No, he’s not hurt. As I said earlier, there is a lot of confusion and disagreement as to what happened tonight,” he continued, seeming more and more like he didn’t want to have this conversation. 

“What does that have to do with my dad? He went into the forest to help. He’s the only one who listened to Murphy,” Clarke argued, growing more and more agitated with the lack of direct answers. 

Why wouldn’t Kane just be straightforward with her? 

She wanted the truth, even if it hurt. No more lies and no more babying. 

“That’s my view of the situation, and it lines up pretty cleanly with John Murphy’s account of what he saw in the days leading up to tonight. As I said before, I believe that Professor McCreary acted alone…” 

“But let me guess…not everyone agrees with you?” Bellamy asked, tightening his grip around Clarke’s shoulders, his tone shifting to something angrier. 

“Not quite...some people think that this was all a misunderstanding, an accident that was caused by a wild animal in the forbidden forest. I don’t personally believe that’s very plausible. But the people who do believe it, think that this situation with McCreary was fabricated to make the Ministry look bad.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone want to make the Ministry look bad?” Clarke asked, confusion overtaking her anger. There were so many emotions swirling in her head, she didn’t know how to react anymore. “I just don’t understand what any of this has to do with my dad?” 

Kane’s lips tightened into a thin line, and he flashed Bellamy a look that seemed like a warning, but even with all the signs, Clarke couldn’t have prepared herself for what he said next. 

“Thelonious and Abby seem to believe that Jake is involved somehow. He’s been arrested for treason against the Ministry.” 

As it turned out, Bellamy’s arm proved to be well placed because it was the only thing that stood in the way between Clarke and the floo. 

If he hadn’t stopped her, she would’ve stormed into the Ministry and thrown her mother in Azkaban herself. 

How could she do something like this? How could she love the Ministry of Magic more than her own family? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY LOVES! I hope you like this one. It's not very rom-com but I am really really excited about it, I think it turned out really cool! I wrote for the HP fandom for years when I was young and it's been very cool to be able to revisit that through my current fandom. Very full circle as an experience. 
> 
> The next chapter will be posted this weekend, probably on Sunday (2/28) so stay tuned for that. 
> 
> I would absolutely positively love to know what y'all think so please let me know if you like it!! 
> 
> Sending you all endless amounts of love, you are all incredible and lovely people who have unique places in this world. If nobody has told you today, you matter and you have something important to share with us all :) Take care and see you all very very soon!


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm back because I have no self-control. 
> 
> This whole fic is pre-written and I will probably post a chapter a day from now on haha

__

_2013_   
_Clarke’s Fourth Year_   
_Bellamy’s Fifth Year_

Clarke hadn’t wanted to come to school. She didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to have to discuss last year and the nightmare that came with it. 

She’d spent her summer with Monty and his grandma, learning how to knit and ignoring owls from her mom. The idea of forgiving her, of letting her get away with putting her father in Azkaban—it made Clarke feel sick. 

He’d died alone in a cell because her mom couldn’t admit that something dark was brewing around them. 

What exactly that darkness was, had vanished with Jake Griffin. 

How could they ignore what was right in front of them? 

Jasper was dead. Harper and Monty had been held hostage by a Hogwarts professor. Murphy saw the whole thing unfold in front of his eyes, and nobody wanted to believe him.

The entire Ministry of Magic was in on it—including Abby and Thelonious. 

And the worst part, Wells was on their side. Clarke lost her oldest friend because he couldn’t seem to understand how serious this all was. 

This year was going to be the worst year ever. There was no way around it. 

The sorting ceremony had even lost its usual charm, and Clarke could barely bring herself to cheer as each student was sorted one by one. It only made her think back to her excitement as a first-year, back when everything was beautiful and full of possibilities. 

“I think we should get out of here. Kane is going to talk about…everything, and I don’t think any of us want to be there for that,” Bellamy murmured, tilting his head toward one of the side doors. 

Everyone seemed to agree, and one by one, they crept out of the Great Hall. 

The last thing any of them wanted to hear was a thinly veiled excuse about how Jasper had been killed by a stray werewolf. 

It felt disrespectful to his memory to even think about the stupid story the Ministry made up. 

Not to mention that Professor McCreary was still sitting at the head table, smiling smugly, probably thinking horrible things about the students he was facing. 

The school was supposed to be a place where they felt safe, where everything was magical and possible—but that illusion had been broken. The school definitely wasn’t safe anymore. 

But despite everything, all the sleepless nights where Clarke had cursed everything that led up to that horrible night, she was glad to have her friends. 

They had kept each other sane this summer. 

In the wake of everything that happened, they’d all fallen apart in different ways. 

Monty seemed hollow, like a piece of his heart had died with Jasper. He didn’t smile as much, never seemed to laugh anymore. Clarke didn’t know if he would ever be the same. But they’d spent so many nights sitting out on his grandma’s roof, talking about the universe and where people go when they die. They’d baked cookies and drawn pictures and picked apples in the backyard, and hopefully, with time, the good things would outweigh the bad. He’d found comfort in Harper, too, the same reassurance Clarke associated with Bellamy. 

Harper had changed too. She was just less—bright. The only person she really wanted to talk to anymore was Monty. They spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, cultivating plants, pulling weeds, tucking seeds in little pockets of dirt. She said it was a way to bring life to the world, that it helped her balance out some of the darkness. 

It made sense that they were different after what happened, after they’d watched their best friend die in front of their eyes. 

But Clarke could feel the change in herself too. After she lost her dad, anger became her neutral setting. It just felt easier to be mad at the world. It hurt less than wrapping her head around the fact that her entire family fell apart in one night. No matter how many times she went over it, Clarke just couldn’t understand how everything went so wrong so quickly. The only time she felt like herself was when Bellamy and Octavia came to visit. 

Every time, Bellamy brought a new book for Clarke, whatever he’d been reading lately, just something to help her keep her thoughts from wandering too much. He left notes in the margins, circled passages he liked, and unlined his favorite phrases. She loved searching for them, reading his insights. 

In return, she’d sent him her sketches of scenes from the books, tied to parcels of cookies she baked with Monty’s grandma. 

It made a long, hard, sad summer just a bit better. 

When everything felt like it was falling apart, the little pieces of normalcy made it all feel a bit better. 

What happened at the end of the last year was horrible, but it had undoubtedly brought them all closer together. 

After what they went through, Clarke just wanted a year of peace. No accidents or incidents or anything else out of the ordinary. Only schoolwork and quidditch. 

“I made friends with a house elf last year,” Murphy explained as they walked down the narrow tunnel. “They’re more than happy to entertain us.” 

Immediately, Octavia and Raven jumped into a long-winded explanation of house-elf rights, all of which Murphy promptly ignored. 

“Did you know the Lightbournes have a house elf, and it walks around Diagon alley with a hula skirt on?” Raven ranted, explaining it to Murphy as if they hadn’t already had this conversation one thousand times. 

Clarke hung back until she and Bellamy were at the back of the group. 

He’d changed in the past year too, he suddenly seemed older, more adult, and he towered over her with his giant frame. 

She hadn’t had much time to think about boys lately, not with everything else going on. 

But she couldn’t ignore that her childhood crush on Bellamy had definitely turned into something more. After years of trying to push it down and being teased by Octavia and Monty, her feelings for him were still there. 

It didn’t help that he was so nice to her, that he seemed to know exactly what to say and do to make things feel better. Where other people crowded her and smothered her, even when they meant well—Bellamy just stood by and made sure she knew she wasn’t alone. 

They were friends now, real friends, the kind of friends that shared books and had inside jokes and waved at each other from across the hall. But she loved the books the most, poured over them, drew sketches of scenes, let the biographies and stories distract her from the real world. 

“What did you think of that Nicolas Flamel biography?” He asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets as they walked side by side. 

“It was good, but not as good as the one about Merlin,” she grinned, bumping their shoulders together and letting herself enjoy the small rush of excitement at the contact. “Thanks for the books, all of them. I have...a few sketches I want to show you later.” 

“I’d love to see them,” he grinned, his elbow brushing hers as they walked side by side, just far enough away from everyone else that it felt private. 

It was nice to do something normal. In a dark tunnel outside the Hogwarts kitchen, Clarke was just a teenage girl talking to a beautiful boy about books they liked. 

She was glad they skipped the feast.

***

  
“I have a book about the American witch trials for you,” Bellamy said, sitting on the other end of the plush couch from where Clarke had been writing her potions essay. 

She grinned, trying not to let too much of her excitement show as she took the book and tucked it in her backpack. 

Why exactly he chose to sit on the couch with Clarke when half the fifth year girls were trying to get his attention, still didn’t really make sense to her. They looked like adults, with their perfect make-up and boobs that made their sweaters look fashionable instead of plain. There was no reason why Bellamy would want to pay attention to Clarke instead of them right now. 

“How’s Roma?” She asked, flicking her gaze toward a pretty dark-haired girl sitting by the fireplace. According to Harper, they’d gone on a date last weekend. 

As much as it felt stupid and unimportant, Clarke was jealous. The discomfort in her chest felt a lot like when Octavia had told her about Bellamy’s first kiss with Raven. She didn’t want to think about Bellamy smiling at other girls or giving them books—or kissing them. 

Especially when Clarke didn’t have anyone else to kiss. 

Finn Collins had chosen Raven over her, meaning she had exactly zero options. Meanwhile, Bellamy had a literal flock of girls just waiting for him to get bored of this conversation. 

“Oh, she’s kind of—ehh, I’m not a fan,” he shrugged, skimming over her essay instead of explaining further. 

Clarke tried not to seem too pleased. 

“She sure didn’t seem to get the message,” she added, unable to resist the little jab. She wasn’t sure what was getting into her. She had more important things to do than be jealous of annoying girls. 

“Not everyone's a little genius,” Bellamy teased, tapping Clarke on the nose as he settled back into the cushion. 

And she hated that he still thought of her as a little kid, his sister’s best friend, who he had to take care of. After everything she’d been through last year, Clarke didn’t feel like a little kid anymore. 

She wanted to tell him as much when a second-year she didn’t recognize came up to them, handing Bellamy a sealed envelope. 

“Professor Kane asked me to give this to you,” he said nervously, dashing off before either of them could ask any questions. 

With his lip caught between his teeth, Bellamy eased the envelope open and scanned the card inside. 

“I swear that man has eyes everywhere,” he sighed, ripping the paper and tucking it back into the envelope. “We have to go.” 

“What? Go where? To see Professor Kane?” Clarke asked, confused as to why he would need to see them at seven o’clock in the evening. 

But Bellamy didn’t answer, just waved for her to follow him as he tossed the envelope into the fire and led her out of the common room. 

The whole thing was starting to freak Clarke out a little bit. 

He waited until they were in an empty hallway, and even then, he cast a muffliato charm before he spoke. 

“You know how weird things always seem to happen to me or you or both of us?” Bellamy asked, sliding down against the wall and sitting on the floor. “Like the thing with our brooms and well, all of last year and that time we almost got grabbed by a dementor before Diyoza saved us?” 

“Yeah, we’re kind of magnets for disaster,” Clarke agreed, thinking back to all the times she’d gotten into weird, embarrassing, or life-threatening situations with Bellamy. 

“Exactly. It’s always been kind of obvious, but with everything else going on, it feels like we can’t ignore it anymore. And I think that’s why Kane wants to add you into our meetings.” 

“What meetings?” she asked, still feeling like she was three steps behind Bellamy’s train of thought. 

“You know about how Kane has been meeting with me every other week since I got to Hogwarts, right?” 

“He meets with you every other week? I thought it was just the one time because you and Octavia showed up to school late…” 

“Nope, that was just one of many meetings,” Bellamy explained, letting his head rest against the chiseled brick. “He’s been arranging them since the first day I got to Hogwarts. I always assumed that it was because of Octavia and the whole sibling thing. I figured he felt guilty that my mom died during the war, and he wanted to make sure that we had support.” 

“I mean, that could be it. He probably added me to this meeting because he feels bad about my dad,” she shrugged, trying not to let her emotions show in her voice. “What a depressing little club.” 

Bellamy reached out and placed a hand on her knee, a silent gesture to urge her away from spiraling into another round of “what ifs.” 

“I doubt it. He knows us both better than that…” 

“Then why would he want me to join you?” 

There was a beat of silence, and Bellamy pulled away from the wall to peek at both ends of the hallway. They were still very much alone. 

“Don’t you think it's weird that it’s always the two of us?” he asked, dropping his voice even lower. 

“Maybe? But I kind of just assumed we were really unlucky or something,” she shrugged, thinking back on all the times weird things happened. He was right. More often than not, they were always at the center of the conflict. 

“This is going to sound crazy…but my theory is that Kane’s meetings have never been about Octavia and me. They’ve been about you and me.” 

Clarke didn’t know what to say.

She felt kind of embarrassed that she’d thought Bellamy liked her when he’d actually been hypothesizing some crazy connection between them—but mainly, she was just confused. 

He was right. It sounded crazy. But it did kind of make sense. They were the closest to whatever was going on outside the castle. 

“Why would he care about you and me?” she asked, desperately scanning her memories for any indication as to why Kane would be interested in them. 

“I don’t know. I just kind of figured this all out right now,” he shrugged, wringing his hands. “But he’s always asking me about you and trying to get the two of us alone. At first, I thought it was because he knew—I uh, I thought it was because he wanted me to get close with your parents. But it seems like there’s more to it than that.” 

“It sounds ridiculous, but I kind of think you might be onto something,” Clarke continued, glad that she wasn’t too far behind on the whole mystery. “Be careful what you tell Kane, okay? I know he seems like he’s on our side, but he’s friends with my mom. We can’t be sure that he’s not reporting things back to her.” 

“Do you think he still believes something is going on?” Bellamy asked, running a hand through his already messy hair. “Or did he buy into the lie about your dad? He seemed pretty adamant when everything went down, but I know that Abby can be convincing.” 

“I think they all know something is going on, especially my mom. But none of them want to admit it.” 

At the mention of her mother, Clarke got angry all over again. All of this would be so much easier if her mom just accepted the truth, if she’d just let Jake tell them what was going on. But now, the answers they were looking for were going to be much harder to find, if not impossible. 

“I never knew how to bring this up to you before. But two years ago, I was talking to your parents and Jaha, and the way they were talking about the war made it sound like they knew things were about to get worse. And now, I can’t help but wonder if there’s so much more to this than we thought,” Bellamy said, playing with the edge of his sleeve like he was worried how she would react. 

But at this point, every new detail about her mom being a liar just made Clarke feel more and more numb. She’d spent most of the summer wondering how long this had all been going on, how much the Ministry had worked to cover things up before they bubbled over. 

What Bellamy was telling her lined up perfectly with her suspicions. 

He believed it too. They were on the same page, and it seemed like he was the only other person who wanted to do something about it. 

So she told him about the note she’d found in her dad’s study, tucked under the leg of his desk. It was ripped, more of a scrap of paper than a note. But it was enough to prove that her mother was lying and that Bellamy’s suspicions were right. 

Whatever happened in the woods wasn’t an accident. 

“Alie is alive?, blood purity, the ministry is full of sympathizers,” the note had read, all written on different lines, cutting off all the details. It was barely a tenth of the story.   
  
He’d known that things were going to go wrong, and he hadn’t wanted to leave her in the dark. 

Jake uncovered something about Alie, and whatever it was, the Ministry was desperately trying to hide it. When Murphy reported what happened to Jasper, he’d tried to tell Jaha, to put a stop to it. But Jaha and her mom turned him into the Wizengamot instead. 

They didn’t want to accept that there was another war looming in front of them, that if things didn’t change, people would die. 

Clarke had a bad feeling that Jasper had been the unlucky first, but there would undoubtedly be more people who met an unfortunate fate if things kept going this way, if everyone continued to be in denial. 

“All of this fits together somehow. Jasper, Alie, McCreary, the Ministry…but we need more time to figure out how,” she said, hoping that he didn’t think she was unhinged after all this. Everyone had been treating her like she had lost her mind, and it was starting to drive her insane. 

And to her surprise, he agreed with her. He seemed almost relieved that she hadn’t dismissed his doubts, that she had concerns of her own. 

At least they were in this together. 

Now she just had to get over her stupid crush on him. 

***

  
“Are the meetings always that boring?” Clarke asked, leaning in an archway across from Bellamy, staring out at the lanterns floating on the lake. 

Kane had rambled for an entire hour, and he’d told them nothing. He hadn’t even probed Clarke about her summer. 

He just asked questions about their classes and made them drink tea. By the end of it, Clarke started to miss her unfinished potions essay. 

“He’s warming you up. It took almost a year before he started asking me real questions, like about my mom and stuff,” Bellamy explained, giving her a closed-mouthed smile. 

“Well, that sucks, and it doesn’t really help us with figuring everything out. Unless Josephine being a complete asshole fits into that theory.” 

At the mention of Josephine, Bellamy’s smile widened, like he’d picked up on something Clarke had missed. She kind of hated it, because she didn’t like feeling stupid. If they were talking about anything else, she would’ve pretended like she didn’t care—but she wanted to know. 

“I’ve been meeting with Kane long enough that I can kind of tell when he’s digging at something,” he said, pushing off the wall and stepping into her space. “And I think we might have a lead.” 

  
***

Hogsmeade weekends were usually Clarke’s favorite. She loved stocking up on candy and drinking butterbeer with Octavia and Monty, and buying new sketchbooks. 

But this weekend, she pretended to be sick—because Bellamy said he had an idea. 

Whatever this was, it better be worth it. 

Hoping she looked convincing, Clarke wrapped herself in a blanket and held a mug in her lap, hoping she looked convincingly sick. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to come? We can find you some pepper up potion?” Octavia asked, and Clarke felt guilty about lying to her. Especially when she was lying to scheme with Bellamy of all people. 

“I should get some sleep. My head is throbbing. I’ll come next weekend!” She said, hating the lie as it came out of her mouth. 

With a sad smile and a wave, her friends vanished through the portrait door, leaving Clarke to finish her tea alone. 

She’d almost drained her mug when Bellamy came jogging down the stairs from the boys' dorms with a massive smile on his face. 

“Do you still have your dad’s cloak? The invisibility cloak?” He asked, flopping down beside her, close enough that she could smell the sharp sting of his soap. 

Clarke had forgotten he knew about it, after she and Octavia used it to follow Monty last year. 

“Why do we need it? I thought you had a lead,” she groaned, suspicious over whether Bellamy actually knew what he was doing. 

“I do have a lead. But we need the cloak.” 

“Why?” Clarke sighed, not wanting to deal with all the precautions that came with using it. She knew it was special, that it worked better than most cloaks. Her dad had warned her to only tell people she really trusted about it. There was also the added complication that it would be much harder to hide Bellamy under it than to hide Octavia. 

Her crush was going away slowly, as she spent evenings in the common room trying to find things wrong with his face. But standing as close to him as the cloak would require did not seem good for her. 

Once again, Bellamy cast a muffliato spell even though they were the only people in the room. 

“Kane asked you way too many questions about Josephine. Like way too many. Especially since he knows you don’t like her. I think that whatever is going on has to do with the Slytherins.” 

“Valid assumption since most evil things have to do with the Slytherins.” 

“Exactly. And it makes sense since it's pretty obvious that Professor McCreary kidnapped Jasper. Josephine is like his henchman already. She’s always hanging back after class and asking him a million questions. Between her and Gabriel, McCreary had plenty of help.” 

“Are you trying to say that the Slytherins helped kill our friend?” Clarke asked, thrown off by how dramatically the conversation had turned. She hated Josephine as much as the next person, but she didn’t think she was a murderer. “Kane seems pretty sold on it being McCreary by himself.” 

“No, I’m saying they helped him. Murphy said himself that he was pretty sure he saw Gabriel asking McCreary about Polyjuice potion after class. They are involved in this somehow. I just know it,” Bellamy continued, voice tinging with slight frustration. “So I think we should wear the cloak and follow them around Hogsmeade. Maybe we catch a hint of something important. Neither of them is very good at being humble or subtle.” 

And, of course, this lead very conveniently fed into Bellamy’s weird rivalry with Gabriel. 

“You just don’t like Gabriel.” 

“I don’t. He’s fishy, and he’s bad at quidditch, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he sighed, like he knew this argument was bound to happen. 

“Fine. But if we don’t find anything, we leave them alone. I don’t want Josephine thinking that I’m obsessed with her,” Clarke conceded, shooting Bellamy a serious glare before she went to get the invisibility cloak. 

***

  
They didn’t fit under the cloak at all. No matter which way they tried to stand, Bellamy’s feet were visible. 

“You’re too far away,” he groaned, placing both hands on Clarke’s shoulders and pulled her flush against his chest. 

For a moment, it felt like her heart was going to stop, but Clarke had to remind herself that she couldn’t get distracted right now. 

“How can we walk like this?” She argued, stepping on Bellamy’s foot to illustrate her point. 

“Well, do you have any better ideas?” 

“Yes. We stand a normal distance apart, and you bend a little. Problem solved.” 

“I’m going to throw out my back.” 

“What are you, a hundred years old?” 

They bickered and positioned and repositioned until Bellamy finally conceded, but only after he’d tried and failed to carry her on his back. 

With both of his hands braced on her biceps to keep his balance, they walked to Hogsmeade with Bellamy hunched over to keep the cloak on the ground. 

Josephine and Gabriel apparently frequented different shops than everyone else. It took them a while to find them as they dipped into each shop and scanned the crowd. At Honeydukes, they came scarily close to being spotted by Octavia, who seemed to be able to sense their presence behind her. 

“Can we go behind a bush or something? I need to stretch,” Bellamy sighed, allowing a bit more of his body weight to rest on Clarke's shoulders. 

Without thinking, she reached back and ran a gentle hand through his hair, a comforting gesture and nothing more. But Bellamy froze in place, barely breathing when her palm brushed the back of his neck. 

Clarke could feel her cheeks heating, unsure of what to do with herself. She’d done it without thinking, and now her hand was glued to the back of his neck, his face inches from hers. This had been a bad idea from the start. Her crush was nowhere close to gone…if anything, it was worse. 

Just as she was about to melt into the ground, they caught sight of Josephine’s emerald green coat disappearing into The Three Broomsticks. 

The awkwardness of the past moment ebbed away as they shared an excited look and followed, sliding into the seat of a corner booth. 

Sitting made the cloak much easier. As long as nobody decided to sit on them, they would be fine. 

It also gave them a few inches of much-needed breathing room. 

Clarke needed a few minutes to gather her thoughts, to shake off the tingle under her skin from their proximity. 

Careful not to rustle the cloak, Bellamy threaded an extendable ear down the side of the booth, letting it rest on the floor. 

This course forced them to basically sit on top of each other to keep the ear from echoing throughout the entire pub. 

So much for space. 

Thankfully, Josephine hadn’t had thought to cast a muffliato charm, meaning they could hear the entire conversation crystal clear. 

“Ugh, it's so crowded here. I don’t even know why we bother coming,” Josephine huffed, just as shrill and entitled as always.   
“It really is unfortunate that there are only a few places left where we don’t have to deal with mudbloods,” Gabriel agreed, and both Bellamy and Clarke flinched at the word choice. 

“My dad says it’s only a matter of time before we don’t have to deal with them,” she snickered, taking a sip from her drink as her friends joined in. “It’s going to be so nice once they’re all gone.” 

Something about the way she said it made Clarke’s hair stand on end. Even though the entire table was laughing, it didn’t sound like a joke. 

“Josie, don’t be so obvious,” Gabriel’s voice replied, followed by a smack that presumably came from Josephine. “Someone could hear you.” 

“Nobody cares, baby. The Ministry is on our side. My dad said so.” 

“Still, we need to be careful…” 

“You’re a prime Gabe. Stop acting like a coward,” she snapped and once against the whole table laughed. 

A prime? 

Clarke’s eyebrows shot up at the unfamiliar word, and she turned so quickly toward Bellamy that the cloak slipped a bit. Not enough that they could have been seen, but enough to make her panic a little. 

“Prime,” Bellamy mouthed, eyes wide as he readjusted the cloak. 

Maybe that was the piece they were missing. Perhaps, McCreary was one of them too—it certainly seemed to align with his beliefs. 

Anxious to learn more, they hung onto every word of the conversation. But it grew dull quickly, switching over to Christmas vacation and quidditch scores. 

There didn’t seem like there was much of a point to eavesdropping anymore. The lead was dead. 

Pulling the ear back in, they very carefully eased out of the booth, taking up their positions again as they began the slow trek back up to the castle. 

At least they had something. They could work with this, research it. It was one step closer to an answer.

  
***

  
Clarke stared up at the canopy of her bed, shooting out tiny sparks from the tip of her wand. 

She’d thankfully learned how to control the magic, and now it was something of a comfort, something that reminded her of simpler times. 

After a long day of stalking and searching the library for mentions of “primes,” Clarke was exhausted. Usually, she and Bellamy had fun together, but all of this was starting to get stressful very quickly, and when they got stressed, they started to bicker. 

Perhaps it was for the best that her crush didn’t go anywhere—not when they had more important things to do. It wasn’t always going to be sharing books and showing him drawings. 

Her thoughts went back to Josie’s words. The way she said them, she made it sound like the Prime people were trying to get rid of muggleborns. 

And after hearing what Professor McCreary said about “dirty blood” last year, Clarke was very afraid of what that meant. 

After today, she had a vague idea of what was going on, but she still didn’t know how she and Bellamy fit into it. 

Why did Kane want to monitor them so closely? 

The more she thought about it, the more her head started to hurt. 

Clarke’s thought spiral was interrupted when Octavia pushed the curtains to the bed aside. Instinctively, she scooted over to make room. They shared their bed all the time since it made it easier to talk without bothering the other girls. 

But Octavia didn’t climb in. She just stood at the side of the bed with her arms crossed. 

“I saw you in the Three Broomsticks today with Bellamy,” she whispered harshly, looking around before she jumped onto the bed and closed the curtains. “Under the cloak.” 

And Clarke didn’t know how to respond. She and Bellamy hadn’t talked about what to do if they got caught, especially not by Octavia. But she knew the silence made her look even more suspicious. 

“You looked rather cozy…” 

“It’s not what you think—” Clarke said, trying to think of something, anything that could explain this without dragging Octavia into it. 

“Out of all the boys, you had to date my brother and then hide it from me?” Octavia continued, clearly upset about what she’d seen. 

A date? 

Octavia thought they were on a date. 

If this wasn’t so stressful, Clarke would have laughed. She wished it was something that simple, that she could just be fourteen and normal, but the universe seemed keen on not letting that happen. 

“I’m not dating Bellamy. He treats me like a little kid,” she tried to explain, knowing it didn’t sound super convincing. “We fight all the time.” 

“Stop lying. You smell like him! It’s like you bathed in his cologne or something.” 

Clarke wanted to cry with frustration or to just tell her friend what was going on, but she knew she couldn’t, not before they knew anything for sure. 

“We aren’t dating. Please just ask Bellamy about it. He can explain it better,” she tried, but before she could even finish, Octavia fixed her with a deathly glare. 

“I can’t believe you guys. I don’t care if you date him, but you thought you had to lie about it, and I don’t understand why.” 

With that, she turned on her heel and left. As the curtains fluttered closed, Clarke saw the glimmer of hurt on her best friend’s face, and it broke her heart. 

She tried not to cry as she started up at the ceiling again, wishing that she could just have typical teenager problems, that she could owl her dad and ask for his help, that she could talk to Wells without feeling sick to her stomach. 

She couldn’t lose Octavia too. 

Somehow Clarke would have to convince her that she wasn’t interested in Bellamy, even if she didn’t want to. 

_***_   
_2014_   
_Clarke’s Fifth Year_   
_Bellamy’s Sixth Year_

Clarke pulled Cillian in closer by his collar, kissing him soundly, just as Bellamy strolled by on his prefect rounds. 

This all started as a way to get Octavia off her back about Bellamy. After they’d gotten caught sneaking to Hogsmeade last year, Octavia had been on Clarke’s case about liking her brother. 

And she kept saying that she didn’t care, but Clarke could tell that deep down, it upset her. 

So Clarke started purposely and obviously flirting with other people. 

It was harmless at first, until she realized that it actually seemed to bother Bellamy. Every time she strolled into the common room with a new boy, his gaze would flicker over to her, and she could tell it got under his skin. 

Shortly after that, it stopped being about Octavia and started morphing into a weird obsession with making Bellamy jealous. 

And she liked making him jealous, a lot. 

But what she didn’t like was when he started giving her a taste of her own medicine. 

First, there was Bree, beautiful Bree, who Bellamy constantly made out with in hidden corners between classes. 

Then, he had a brief stint where he dated a Ravenclaw with a shrill voice who would scream as loud as she could during quidditch games. 

But now, he had Gina, and something about Gina seemed different. Bellamy no longer made a point to show off his relationship. 

He actually seemed to like her. 

In the process of trying to simultaneously make Bellamy jealous and convince everyone she didn’t like him, Clarke hurt her own feelings. 

So she was trying to move on, but Cillian didn’t really make her feel the way Bellamy did. He didn’t make her skin feel like it was on fire. 

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have other options. A Ravenclaw named Lexa kept staring at her from across the great hall, but Clarke wasn’t sure if she wanted to explore other options. 

“Break it up,” Bellamy chastised, nostrils flaring as Clarke and Cillian broke apart, a large dark bruise blooming right above Cillian’s collar. 

And for a fraction of a second, Clarke saw a flicker of jealousy cross Bellamy’s face, and she felt a flush of satisfaction at the recognition. 

But it also made her a bit sad. 

In all their efforts to convince everyone around them that they weren’t dating, they’d lost their friendship. They no longer shared quiet moments in dark hallways comparing notes about their meetings with Kane or observations of suspicious behavior from Slytherins. All their scheming and plotting and worrying, things that had once been central to their relationship, had fallen to the wayside. 

They didn’t even trade books anymore. The stack of historical novels she’d saved for him over the summer was now collecting dust under her bed. 

Clarke knew that it was irresponsible, that everything they’d been worried about was still looming ahead, but she didn’t know how to fix things anymore. 

Their friendship felt too far gone. 

Growing up wasn’t as fun as she thought it would be. Sometimes she wished she could go back to the moments in the common room where she would study Bellamy’s face and wonder what kissing felt like. 

She knew what kissing felt like now, but she still didn’t know what kissing Bellamy felt like. 

***

  
Clarke flew out of Kane’s office the second their meeting was over. 

They still didn’t know anything, and the meetings were starting to seem more and more pointless. 

Especially now that he and Clarke could barely manage to be in the same room together. 

Bellamy didn’t know if Kane picked up on it or not, but the tension in the office bordered on unbearable more often than not. 

He hated it. 

They never should have let it get to this point. It all spiraled out of control so quickly. 

Things weren’t supposed to be like this—not for him and Clarke. 

It started as something fun, a back and forth, a simmering tension, like a game. 

But they’d taken it too far, and now Bellamy just had hurt feelings, and a girlfriend who could tell his mind was elsewhere. 

He was miserable, and he felt like a jerk. 

And it didn’t matter because Clarke had moved on with a Ravenclaw girl who gave Miller a black eye in a quidditch game. 

Not to mention, they’d completely abandoned their efforts to figure out the primes or pin down anyone involved in Jasper’s death. 

Their plight was all but forgotten, punctuated by the endless empty questions from Kane. 

Maybe he should just let it all go, focus on his relationship with Gina and his school work and pretend like everything with Clarke never happened. 

But as Bellamy entered the common room and took his place beside his girlfriend, he caught sight of Clarke again, and he knew he never actually could. 

Things might be bad right now, but they couldn’t stay this way forever. 

Because deep down, Bellamy knew that whatever tied him to Clarke, whatever kept drawing them toward trouble, it wasn’t something he could truly escape. 

And he didn’t want to. 

From the moment he first saw her, Bellamy knew that Clarke was supposed to be a part of his life.

Even if right now, looking at her for too long made him feel like his chest was going to explode, they couldn’t stay in this stalemate forever. 

At least he hoped they couldn’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read so far! I'm so grateful for all of you! This has been a blast to write, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed writing something this much. 
> 
> Much love to all of you. I hope you had a great day :) 
> 
> Please let me know what you think!!! I love love love hearing from you!


	3. PART 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all like it :)

  
Summer 2014 

Bellamy stood beside Gina, mainly because he didn’t know where else to stand. Things between them were awkward post-breakup, and in light of everything that was going on, his petty drama felt like the least important thing in the world. He shouldn’t have invited her to this. It felt intrusive and weird to have his ex-girlfriend standing beside him at a funeral. 

From across the crowd, he could see Octavia, curled around Clarke and Monty, all three of them staring blankly out the window. 

That girl with the eyeliner Clarke had been dating was nowhere to be seen, making Bellamy feel even more awkward about Gina’s presence. 

He regretted the dick measuring contest he’d gotten into with Clarke, the jealousy he’d let cloud their friendship and distract him from what really mattered. His feelings for her were confusing and complicated, and he let them get to his head—they both did, and in the process, they lost sight of what was important. 

Wells Jaha had paid the price for their distraction. 

They could have stopped it. They could have seen it coming, should have seen it coming. After what happened with Jasper, all the evidence was right in front of them. They’d just been too far up their own asses to see it. 

If they’d been more in tune, if they’d kept up with their investigative work, they would have been able to intervene. 

But when Wells got kidnapped, Bellamy knew it was too late. 

“I think I should go,” Gina said, clearly following his line of sight toward Clarke. “I don’t belong here.” 

And Bellamy didn’t have the energy to argue. He just apologized and let her go. 

“But you should know that Lexa broke up with her...for similar reasons as to why I’m leaving this party,” she shrugged, pressing a kiss to Bellamy’s cheek before vanishing into the crowd. 

Now alone, Bellamy stuffed his hands in his pockets, scanning the crowd for someone to talk to. He hadn’t known Wells particularly well, but he did have that empty feeling of knowing that another person their age had died a senseless death. 

“Are you and O staying here tonight?” Murphy asked as he and Raven came to stand beside him. 

“I think so.” 

“You should talk to Clarke then. I think she really needs someone right now, and you guys just kind of understand each other. There’s always been something special between you two,” Raven added. And he knew she was right, but Bellamy was getting tired of everyone bringing up him and Clarke. 

There were so many other things going on, life or death things. Now was not the time to try and tell her that he liked her. But even Bellamy couldn’t deny that Raven had a point. He and Clarke did always understand each other on a level that nobody else seemed to. 

Maybe it was time to mend fences with Clarke. Patching things over didn’t necessarily mean that they had to talk about—whatever happened last year. 

And with Wells gone, with the Primes and ALIE looming over them, they needed each other now more than ever. 

***

  
With a faint knock on Clarke’s door, Bellamy carefully eased it open. 

Despite all his summer visits here, he’d never been inside this room. It felt very Clarke, with light blue walls and clouds painted on the ceiling and posters of the Hollyhead Harpies hung on the wall. Above her bed, she had clusters of photos, and even from far away, Bellamy could see his own face reflected in some of the moving frames. 

He felt horrible. Guilty and heartsick and regretful that he’d spent an entire year purposely trying to make her jealous. It had started as a way to get his sister off their backs, to convince her that they were, in fact, just friends. But that was kind of the problem. Being just friends with Clarke was hard. 

“It all feels so stupid now, doesn’t it?” Clarke said, voice cracking with the weight of her tears. She gave him a weak smile, one that barely made it up her cheeks, let alone to her eyes. 

And seeing how defeated she looked, how suddenly grown up she seemed, Bellamy didn’t care about any of it anymore. 

“I’m sorry. About everything,” he sighed, kneeling down beside her on the floor, hoping she didn’t push him away. “I regret all of it. I miss you and I don’t want to do this anymore.” 

To his relief, she threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly. All at once, she unraveled, like she’d been barely holding on by a thread until now, and Bellamy just held her in his lap, letting her get her feelings out. 

If he felt guilty, Clarke’s guilt had to be a hundred times worse. 

He wished he could take the pain of it all away, that he could fix it all with magic, but he couldn’t. 

Something deep inside him always told him that it was up to him and Clarke to fix everything and that feeling had never been stronger than it was right now. 

“We could’ve stopped it. We knew about the Primes, about McCreary, about—“ she sobbed, fingers digging into his shoulders as she cried, and Bellamy knew this path well. He’d been thinking about it non-stop for the past two weeks. But dwelling over it would drown Clarke in guilt and break her heart in the process. “I feel so selfish.” 

“Clarke. There’s no way the adults didn't know about it too. Jaha is the minister of magic. We’re just two random kids. If there was a way to stop it, they would have stopped it. They made the choice to let McCreary back into the school.” 

“They’re all useless. The Ministry doesn’t care that people are dying. First Jasper and now Wells. Nobody cares. They just want everything to be perfect.” 

“I care. If nobody is listening, then we can go back to figuring this out by ourselves. But you can’t blame yourself for what happened to Wells. The guilt will kill you,” he assured, smoothing down Clarke’s hair as he continued to rock back and forth. “I’ve been down that road. It will drive you crazy.” 

At this confession, Clarke looked up at him, confused. He’d never told anyone about this—except Kane. But Clarke had trusted him with a secret once, and it was the reason they were here today. 

He had to tell her the truth, the whole truth. 

Unable to meet her gaze, he told her about his childhood, his mom, how they hid Octavia under the floor for almost five years. He’d been the one responsible for his sister. It had been his job to make sure she stayed inside when his mom went to meetings. 

He hadn’t really understood that having two kids was against the law. He just knew that nobody could ever know about his sister. 

But he’d always felt guilty that she was trapped inside, that she never got to play. So he took her into the yard—just once, and it set off a detection spell. 

Within minutes, Alie’s supporters appeared in their yard. 

They’d almost been executed on the spot, but someone intervened. The person still remained fuzzy in Bellamy’s memory, but whoever it was had saved him from an early death. 

But in all the chaos, Octavia got left behind. 

Aurora went after her the moment she heard, and in the process of saving Octavia—she’d died. 

For years, living with his aunt, Bellamy blamed himself for what happened. 

He sacrificed everything to make sure that Octavia was okay. It was what his mother would have wanted. It was what she died for. 

The guilt ate him up inside. He became so upset and paranoid that he’d tried to get rid of his magic—and he’d almost succeeded. But one day, Kane came to their doorstep. He was the one who told him about Alie and explained that she had been tracking them for years. It had only been a matter of time.

Kane was the one who explained to him that he wasn’t responsible for the mistakes of the adults around him, that all he could do was live his life and try to be the best he could to be good. 

For all of Kane’s faults, Bellamy would be grateful for those conversations until the day he died. He would have never made it to Hogwarts without them. 

With time, Bellamy came to accept that it wasn’t his fault. But it took him a long time to get there, and he didn’t want Clarke to have to endure the same burden. 

“Bellamy…” she whispered, taking his hand in hers and stroking his skin with her thumb. “I didn’t know.” 

“Almost nobody does,” he shrugged, trying not to let it show that he was on the verge of tears. “Just me, you and Kane…maybe your mom.” 

As they sat on the hard floor, holding one another, processing all of their combined grief…Bellamy felt something shift. For the entirety of last year, he’d felt like he was about to crawl out of his own skin, like no matter what he did, things felt slightly left of center. 

But now, the discomfort felt like a distant memory. 

He’d always known that there was something unique between him and Clarke, but now he could feel it in the air, their connection. 

Not romantic, but rather cosmic. 

“Will you stay?” Clarke asked, looking up at her twin bed behind them. 

And Bellamy knew it was a matter of comfort, that it would be a long time before they could really be anything more…if ever. 

But he also knew that nobody else would ever make him feel the way Clarke did. 

She was it for him. She always would be. 

“Of course,” he said softly, keeping their hands clasped together as they curled into the small bed. 

As he held her, he listened to her breathing and let himself believe what he’d known all along, something he’d been fighting to accept under the delusion that they could just ignore things and be normal. 

It would be up to him and Clarke to figure all of it out, to fight off whoever was trying to ruin the wizarding world’s hard-earned peace. 

***

  
Bellamy slept in Clarke’s bed every night for the rest of the summer. It was a comfort for them both, something steady at the end of the day as the world around them started to fall apart. 

The Minister of Magic had taken to sleeping on the Griffin’s living room couch. Which was unsettling in itself, but everyone seemed to be on edge lately. 

Clarke’s mom hid behind the constantly closed kitchen door, whispering harshly with random ministry officials who came through the floo. 

Octavia and Murphy grew angrier and more resentful with each passing day, sitting in the backyard and practicing violent defensive spells on unsuspecting gnomes. 

All at once, it felt like the last of their childhoods had slipped away, the lingering, looming cloud of an impending war filling all of their thoughts. 

“What do you think our lives would be like if things were normal?” Clarke asked, turning in Bellamy’s arms so she could meet his eyes. 

Bellamy reached out to tuck a curl behind her ear, already knowing his answer without a shred of doubt. 

He would’ve told Clarke how he really felt. Maybe she would have felt the same way. Perhaps they could’ve just been a regular couple. They’d be on the quidditch team together, study together in the library, drink butterbeer with their friends. Life would be beautiful and easy. 

Sadly, that wasn’t reality. 

“No point dwelling on dreams,” he said instead, pushing down a confession that wasn’t appropriate for their situation. But despite his reservations, he still pressed a soft kiss to her forehead and tightened his arms around her body. 

“Dreams are rather lovely,” she replied, cupping his cheek, her palm warm against his skin. “They might be the only lovely thing we still have.” 

What they were doing right now was dangerous. It would change everything and make everything more complicated, but Bellamy was so tired of beating around the bush. 

“I don’t know, this is pretty lovely,” he chuckled, adjusting his arms so Clarke could curl fully into his chest, her face fitting perfectly into the crook of this shoulder. 

Bellamy always tried his best not to dwell on what could have been, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit angry that he and Clarke had to take on the responsibility of this mess. 

It was their burden to bear because nobody else seemed to want to deal with it. 

These stolen moments were the closest thing they had to normalcy. 

He was on the verge of throwing it all out the window and kissing her, when the bedroom door burst open, and all their friends came pouring in. 

They immediately jumped apart, but nobody seemed to care about what they’d been doing. 

“Look what I got!” Monty exclaimed, holding up two extendable ears. 

“It’s the only way to figure out what’s going on,” Murphy continued, gesturing to the kitchen directly below Clarke’s bedroom. “Since nobody seems to want to tell us.” 

Bellamy managed to untangle his and Clarke’s limbs, before taking the ears and examining them. 

“And they won’t notice?” He asked, turning the small piece of rubber between his fingers before passing it over to Clarke. 

She looked unconvinced, which of course, made Bellamy nervous. They’d use these before when they’d spied on Josephine, but eavesdropping on a bunch of teenagers is a totally different game than trying this on Ministry officials. 

But doubts aside, he couldn’t believe he and Clarke hadn’t thought of this themselves. Sometimes he forgot that Murphy was kind of a genius when it came to scheming. 

“We can’t waste both of them…” Clarke explained, moving to string the ear through a small crack in the floorboard at the edge of the wall. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to be easy. My mother is a lot of things, but stupid is unfortunately not one of them.” 

Bellamy held the extra ear as Clarke carefully guided the ear lower and lower. There was a fair distance between the room and the ceiling, but eventually, they heard a metallic creak. 

“I think it worked!” Murphy exclaimed, pumping his fist in the air as they all waited to see if they could actually hear anything. 

But a few seconds later, there was a cartoonish bouncing sound, and the ear flew back up through the crack and slapped Clarke on the chin. 

A red welt appeared on her skin, and with a sour frown, she handed the two pieces of the ear back to Murphy. 

“Could we cast a glamour on it?” Monty asked, looking between Bellamy and Raven, who’d both turned 17 earlier in the summer. 

“We could try, but it seems like they warded the kitchen against listening devices,” Raven shrugged, playing with their last remaining ear. 

“I hate this,” Octavia groaned, flopping back onto the wooden floorboards. “Why won’t they tell us anything? Do they think we’re stupid enough to believe that everything is fine and dandy?” 

“They know we know. They just don’t want us going back to school and telling everyone else that the world is ending,” Bellamy shrugged, thinking back to the stupid excuse that had been cooked up about Jasper’s death. Sadly, Wells would probably receive similar treatment. Merlin forbid anyone be honest with children. 

And the idea of going back to school, of trying to pretend that nothing had changed—it definitely wouldn’t be easy. 

***

  
The house grew tenser and tenser as the summer went on, like a pressure cooker that was just on the verge of blowing. They could all feel it in the air, in every word spoken in the main areas. 

Every time another Ministry official came through with armfuls of papers and a furrowed brow, Abby and Jaha became more closed off and aggressive. 

It got to the point where the house had become deadly silent, a far cry from their lively summers of quidditch and bedtime stories and cookies. Nobody wanted to move or speak or do anything. They mainly kept to themselves, locked in their rooms, or clustered in small groups outside in the yard. 

All the awkwardness and tension made Clarke miss her father more than ever before. He never would have allowed their house to become a Ministry hub from hell. Jake always had a way of bringing people together and diffusing tension, which they desperately needed. 

The negativity was spreading throughout the house. They were all fighting, bickering over whether or not they wanted to get involved in the investigation. Octavia, Raven, and Murphy had managed to make their spellwork and sparring even more violent than it was before—impressive considering that neither Murphy nor Octavia could use magic outside of school. They wanted to train for the impending war, just in case they had to go to battle. 

It felt a bit premature and paranoid. For the most part, Clarke and Bellamy stayed out of it. They spent most of their time hidden in the library, digging through her dad’s notes and journals, trying to find anything that could give them real answers. 

So far, they’d made zero progress. 

They couldn’t figure out how everything fit. No matter how many explanations they tried to piece together, nothing seemed right. 

“So we pretty much know for sure that the Primes want to eliminate the muggle borns, but I don’t understand what that has to do with Wells,” She sighed, nudging Bellamy with the side of her foot. 

He was engrossed in a giant leather-backed book, a stack of paper and a quill beside him, already covered in notes. 

“What if what happened to Wells has to do with Alie?” He asked, flipping through the papers and handing her their notes on blood purity. 

Alie still remained the biggest mystery in all this. After her dad died, they’d never found real answers about Alie, about whatever he’d found in his research.

Was she alive? 

How did she escape death when Abby had been sure that she was gone forever? 

And how did she tie into the Primes? 

Alie had never cared about blood purity. She’d only had one goal: population control. She believed that Wizarding blood was becoming diluted, that magic would lose its power if it became too common. 

Regardless of blood status, every wizarding family had only been allowed a single child under her rule. 

Why would purebloods want that? More pureblood children would give them exactly what they wanted—to be the majority. 

“Do we even know for sure about Alie? She’s technically dead. Even magic can’t bring someone back to life,” Clarke shrugged, taking the quill to scribble her thoughts on the corner of the page. “I just don’t understand how she fits into this whole blood status thing. She killed plenty of purebloods during the war.” 

  
“But even without Alie, blood purity alone doesn’t really explain things. Jasper was a muggle born, but Wells was from one of the most prominent pureblood families in the world,” Bellamy sighed, pulling his lip between his teeth. “If they wanted to preserve lineages, they would never kill the only heir to the Jaha line.” 

“Plus, they tried to kill us, and we aren’t muggle borns either…” Clarke admitted, scribbling their thoughts on the list. 

“Exactly. There’s a second part to this…something that ties back to us and explains all the stuff that blood purity doesn’t cover.” 

“That’s what bothers me the most about all this...how do we fit in? Why did this become our problem?” She snapped, frustrated and annoyed that she couldn’t just have a regular boring life. 

Clarke wanted to take all their stupid notes and throw them in the fireplace. She wanted to bring her dad back and go back to having fun summers playing outside and to kiss Bellamy and tell him how she really felt, to forget all this once and for all. 

But she couldn’t do any of that. They had lost so much to all of this, their friends, their family, their childhoods. 

It wasn’t fair, but this was the life they’d been handed. 

“I wish we could just drop all of this and let the people in charge handle this,” Clarke said softly, letting her head thud back against the bookshelf. “But…” 

She trailed off, unable to articulate exactly what it was that she was feeling. 

The silence did a pretty good job of describing her thoughts about it, though. 

“You feel it too, don’t you?” Bellamy asked after a long, solemn pause. “That we are connected to this somehow. It’s always been there, but it’s—stronger now.” 

Clarke nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. It was like a sixth sense, an inkling that no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t distance herself from everything. 

“It doesn’t have to be this hard,” she said, finally letting some of her frustration bubble over. 

They didn’t need to figure it all out by themselves. There were people who had answers, who knew more about Alie and blood purity and the primes than they ever could—people like her mother, Jaha, and Kane. 

Perhaps they could explain the connection too. 

But honestly, she could only trust one of them to not lie to her face. 

“I’m so sick of being in the dark,” she huffed, standing and letting all the papers in her lap fall to the floor. She gathered their notes in one hand and held out the other for Bellamy. “For whatever reason, we have to be involved in this. But that doesn’t mean we have to play into the Ministry’s stupid games.” 

“Where are we going?” He asked, pushing all the fallen items to the side before he stood. 

“We’re going to ask Kane for an explanation, a real explanation, not some stupid lie that my mother forced on him. If we’re going to do this, I’m done with the lies. They aren’t protecting us. They’re protecting people who deserve to be in Azkaban.” 

“And if he says no?” Bellamy continued, pulling her back by the hand as she started to drag him out of the library and into the hallway. 

“I’m not taking no for an answer. If the universe or the magical aura or Merlin himself wants us to be involved, then who is Kane to say that we shouldn’t be?” Clarke demanded, fixing Bellamy with a hard stare before she kept walking toward the study. “And we can’t accomplish anything by throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks. This is life and death. I’m sick of treating it like a herbology project.” 

After that, he stopped arguing with her, following until they were right outside the tall wooden doors that had become Marcus’ office over the summer. 

“I think you should go first...he likes you better,” she urged, gesturing toward the door. It was true. Kane was always more fond of Bellamy. Clarke knew she was a combative annoyance at best and that her inappropriate barbs didn’t exactly make her endearing. She wasn’t really in the position to be making demands, but Bellamy would probably be able to get in with much less of a fight. 

And if all else failed, Clarke would shoulder her way into the room if she had to. They didn’t have any other choice. 

There wasn’t time to waste. 

If they didn’t get back on track, more people would die. 

Bellamy agreed with her, which confirmed that making him go first was undoubtedly the right move. 

But Kane didn’t seem surprised to see them. 

“I was expecting a visit from you two. Not today specifically, but sometime soon,” Kane said, gesturing to the couch in the corner of the room as he moved from behind the desk to sit in an armchair. 

He’d been expecting them. 

Hopefully, it wasn’t just so he could ask them pointless questions about potions class and quidditch practice. 

But for all her talk, when they actually sat down, side by side, like always—Clarke didn’t know what to say. 

Frankly, she’d expected an excuse, a diversion, a promise for a meeting at another time, not an invitation to sit on the couch. 

It wasn’t supposed to be so easy. 

“We’ve been trying to figure out everything for years,” Bellamy admitted, filling the silence once he sensed Clarke’s hesitation. “And we’ve reached the point where we need real answers. You’re the only person who can give them to us.” 

“What have you figured out?” Kane asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankle over his knee. 

“As much as we can possibly figure out by ourselves,” Bellamy countered, crossing his arms over his chest. The combativeness in his tone took Clarke by surprise. Antagonizing the headmaster was usually her job. 

“Like…” 

“The primes,” he shrugged, holding back the minor detail that they had no idea how the Primes actually fit into the equation. “And that the Lightbournes, the Santiagos, and Professor McCreary are all involved with them.” 

Kane seemed sufficiently shocked with that information alone. 

“We know about Alie too,” Clarke added, leaning into the ambiguity of the statement. It wasn’t a complete lie. They knew that Jake had suspicions about Alie. 

Bellamy nodded in agreement, and they were both met with a long stretch of silence. 

Whatever lie Kane and Abby had prepared for this seemed to be backfiring in real-time. They’d cracked the code just enough to make him squirm. 

“We also know that for some reason, we keep getting drawn back to all this. We don’t know why, but we do know that we fit into this somehow too,” Bellamy explained, raising an eyebrow like he was daring Kane to try and lie to them now. 

Clarke wished they had more precise words to explain it, but there wasn’t any logic to this. It was just a feeling, a feeling that they had to keep pushing, that the fate of everyone around them rested on their shoulders. 

She needed answers, needed something to give purpose to all the pain and inconvenience this had already caused them. But it didn’t seem like Kane was going to provide them with any. 

Instead of addressing any of their discoveries, he just stood up and went back to the desk. 

“Clarke, could you give me a moment alone with Bellamy,” he asked, voice strained as he ran his hand across her father’s old wooden table. 

And her first instinct was to argue with him, but something the look on his face told her that she shouldn’t. 

***

  
Bellamy watched as Clarke disappeared through the heavy door, leaving him alone with Kane. He didn’t know where this was going, whether he was about to get answers or if he would be yelled at. 

But when he looked at Kane, he found something that more closely resembled sadness than anger. 

It made his stomach churn. He couldn’t help but feel like they’d pushed him too far. 

“I’m sorry if we—” Bellamy began, feeling guilty that he’d upset one of the only adults who’d ever shown him genuine kindness. 

“I’m not angry. In fact, I’m rather impressed. You two are really something,” he sighed, sitting on the edge of the table and looking back at him. “I always knew this day would come. But I thought I would have a bit more time. You figured things out much faster than I gave you credit for.” 

They were right. 

At least right enough that the headmaster seemed sufficiently uncomfortable. 

“Why couldn’t you just tell us?” Bellamy asked, playing with a loose thread at the knee of his jeans. “Why did we have to figure this out by ourselves?” 

“Because in order for this to work, you need to be a team.” 

“For what to work?” he asked carefully, watching as Kane twisted his ring nervously around his finger. 

Kane didn’t answer. Instead, he stood, rounding the desk so he could dig through the drawers. 

“I made a promise a long time ago that I wouldn’t be the one to tell you this,” he said, gaze flicking toward the closed door. “But the person who was supposed to tell you is dead, and we’re running out of time. I don’t know who is going to tell you if I don’t.” 

And then, he pressed the tip of his wand to his temple, extracting a long, thin silvery-white thread. 

A memory. 

“Return this to me when you’re done,” he continued, pouring the wisp into a small glass vial. “I did everything because I wanted to protect you. Please remember that. I wanted you to be able to be young for at least a little while.” 

Bellamy’s mind immediately drifted back to his nights with Clarke, all the things that remained unsaid between them. 

“Sadly, that ship sailed a long time ago.” 

“No matter what happens from here, I’m really proud of you,” Kane said as he placed the vial on the table, the whisper of tears glimmering in his eyes. 

And Bellamy felt his eyes stinging as well. Nobody had ever said that to him before, at least not anyone he really cared about. 

That little nod of recognition meant the world, and it made all the sacrifice that was surely coming their way feel worth it. 

“Thank you, professor,” Bellamy said with a soft smile, trying to hold himself together. “For everything.” 

There was something final that passed between them as Bellamy tucked the vial in his pocket, like they both knew that everything was about to change. 

***

  
“Do you have a Pensieve?” Bellamy asked, holding up a vial full of silvery liquid as he exited the office. 

“He gave you a memory?” Clarke marveled, taking the small glass tube and turning it in her hands. She’d read about this in books, had always wondered what it was like, but she’d never gotten the chance to actually test it out. 

“I got the feeling that he didn’t think he was the right person for the job,” he shrugged, sitting down beside her on the smooth wooden floor. “It sounded like your dad was supposed to be the one to tell us.” 

Clarke’s chest felt tight at the mention of her father. She’d been thinking about him a lot more lately, wishing she could ask for his advice. He would never have let things get so bad. He would never have let Wells die. 

And she was right. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to fix things. 

But now, it was up to them. 

“There’s one in the library. It’s locked up, but you can probably use an alohamora charm.” 

She handed the vial back to Bellamy, taking his hand as he pulled her up to her feet. He kept their hands joined while they made their way back to the library and something about it made her feel safe and grounded. 

At least she didn’t have to do this alone. 

Thankfully, the simple charm worked on the lock. The heavy metal hit the ground with a sharp clang, allowing the cabinet doors to swing open and reveal a small font. 

“This is going to change everything, isn’t it?” Bellamy asked, hesitating as he held the memory in both his hands. 

“It doesn’t have to,” Clarke said, reaching out to push his hair off his forehead. “No matter what’s in there, we’re still us.” 

“Kane said the reason that they kept us in the dark for so long is because they needed us to be a team,” he continued, covering her hand with his own as it came to rest on his shoulder. 

“We are a team. You’re the heart, and I’m the head. We keep each other in check.” 

She’d been thinking it for a long time, but it felt good to say it out loud. When they weren’t together, it just didn’t feel right. 

It was why the past year had been such a big mistake. 

“I’m pretty sure I’m the head, and you’re the heart…” Bellamy chuckled, giving her a soft, genuine smile. 

“It’s interchangeable depending on the situation,” Clarke agreed, bringing their joint hands up to her lips and kissing his knuckles before she took a step back. “But the sentiment stands.” 

The heat of his skin lingered on her lips, but she couldn’t let herself get distracted right now. 

They were so close to figuring out the truth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! Thank you to everyone who has read this so far and left such kind and wonderful feedback! Writing this has been the exact reset I needed, I'm so excited for y'all to see how it rounds out. 
> 
> As I said, this is all pre-written and I'm just editing as I post. There might be a few more parts based on whether or not the sections get too long!! 
> 
> Sending y'all so much love, kindness, and support! :) 
> 
> Please let me know what you think, I love hearing from you all and getting to know you :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> If you liked this fic and want to be friends, you can find me on Tumblr @Nakey-cats-take-bathsss! I post lots of mood boards and fic content on there! 
> 
> Be well, much love <3


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